


fate, show thy force

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: the twelfth night au [2]
Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: All Trebonds Are Equally Extra, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archery, Canon-Typical Racism, Canon-Typical Sexism, Canon-Typical Violence, Delia Gets A New And Improved Sneaky Career, F/F, Female Friendship, Frogs, Gen, Humor, Necromancy, POV Lesbian Character, Politics, Religion, Spies & Secret Agents, Treason, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-08-25 01:52:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 35,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16652044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: “What possible use could Princess Josiane have for a revenant?” Thom demanded, bursting in on Delia at breakfast.“Thom, this is highly improper,” Delia complained. “I’m doing my best to re-establish myself as a lady of the court, and –”“A revenant, Delia,” Thom said, flinging himself down into a seat and taking a breakfast roll without asking. Delia eyed him resentfully. “A creature of the grave, drawn back from the Black God’s embrace. And besides, you’re my sister-in-law.”***Delia, Thom, and the Great Resurrected Duke Scandal of 439 HE.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I blame Rosie and Lisa for turning my perfectly self-contained AU into this goddamned behemoth. But I also made them beta it so they're forgiven.

“Tell me about your brother,” said Lady Delia, to the man all of Court knew would be her betrothed, just as soon as he earned his shield.

 

Squire Alan stared at the autumn sky for so long that Lady Delia squeezed his arm and drew his attention to a step in the terrace they were strolling along.

 

“Thanks,” Alan said. “He’s… well, he’s the youngest Master in centuries. Possibly the youngest Master ever. I don’t know.”

 

“That’s very impressive.”

 

“Yes.” Alan stared at his feet instead of the sky. “He’s proud and vain and obstinate, and he likes mischief. But he’s a generous man, and a good brother.”

 

“I’m sure I’ll like him very much,” said Lady Delia, soothingly.

 

Squire Alan smiled at her in that curious open way he had, and the débutante pretending not to eavesdrop stifled a longing sigh. Everyone told her not to expect a match like Lady Delia’s, unofficial as it was. Chance was a beautiful thing, but only the luckiest of maidens could expect to be thrown together with so striking a man, the most talented of the squires, powerfully Gifted, wealthy son of an ancient noble house with the patronage of a rich and heirless older courtier who might be expected to leave him a great deal of money, and perhaps even a fief. For Squire Alan to have fallen so very much in love with Lady Delia suggested a degree of chance more comparable to the favour of the Goddess.

 

Even if he was short.

 

Elinor left the terraced gardens, and daydreamed about a future when the songs she knew would be written about Sir Alan and Lady Delia might be written about her and her lord instead.

 

***

 

“So this is the lady who’s captured my brother’s heart,” Thom said, extremely loudly, as he invited Alanna and Delia into his rooms for dinner. “Lady Delia, I am delighted to make your acquaintance. I always wanted a sister.”

 

Alanna went bright red, and stared at Thom with mute outrage as Thom made elegant small talk with Delia (pink with mischief or delight, probably a mixture of the two), ushered her to a chair at the neatly set dining table, and dismissed the servants. Lord Thom’s exuberant acceptance of his brother’s still-unofficial betrothal would be all over the palace within _minutes_. He’d already caused sufficient noise by arriving weeks too early for Alanna’s Ordeal, and by insisting on the preparation of one of the rooms assigned to him as a mage’s workroom. Alanna was never going to hear the end of him – at least, not until she left Corus.

 

“You have a bloody cheek, Thom,” Alanna said, as soon as the door swung shut behind Thom’s manservant.

 

“Why?” Thom blinked at her. “I only want to welcome Lady Delia to the family fold.”

 

Alanna collapsed into her chair. “Thank you,” she said, ungraciously.

 

“My love,” Delia said, smiling her most delicate and ladylike smile, “your brother and I are going to get on very well indeed.”

 

Alanna contemplated allowing her head to fall forward into her plate and bang against the table, but then decided it would be a waste of food.

 

 

The first person to comment on Thom’s enthusiasm was Myles, during one of their quiet evening chats. These had fallen off a little at the beginning of Alanna’s four years as a squire, but had resurged, partly out of tact and partly out of awkwardness, after Alanna’s attachment to Delia became known and Alanna and Jon stopped being quite so inseparable.

 

Alanna didn’t like to think about that. She simply enjoyed the time she spent with Myles, the extra sword work with Alex and Duke Gareth, the hours spent in the Lower City with Eleni and Delia, who was fascinated by every new acquaintance and every new piece of knowledge Alanna could offer her. And of course, the hours spent in Delia’s company, even chaperoned, took up much of the spare time that Alanna had once spent running after Jon. Alanna found it difficult to imagine not spending that time with her, once she revealed herself as a knight and a woman; that was another of the things she didn’t like to think about.

 

Faithful kept reminding her of those things, which was obnoxious of him. Alanna didn’t know why she’d ever expected anything else.

 

“Your brother seems very fond of Lady Delia,” Myles commented, removing another of Alanna’s chess pieces from the board, and rendering her remaining rook totally useless. “I take it he approves of your arrangement?”

 

“Oh, definitely,” Alanna said, staring at the board and wondering how she could possibly get out of this one.

 

“He seems to have no inclination to marry himself,” Myles remarked.

 

“Marry his books, maybe,” Alanna replied, snorting. “But it’s early days yet. We’re only eighteen.”

 

“He may see no need to wed,” Myles pointed out, “if you and Lady Delia have sons.”

 

Alanna choked on her wine. Faithful meowed his amusement, and she nudged him vengefully with a toe. He seized her ankle in his claws, too lightly to scratch.

 

“As you say,” Myles said mildly, face poker-straight and eyes on hers, “early days yet.”

 

“Uh,” Alanna said, strangled, and made such a terrible move Myles checkmated her five minutes later.

 

 

The second person to comment was Gary, when Alanna rode out into the royal forest with him, and told him she was a girl.

 

“But –” Gary said, clearly struggling. “But – everyone thinks you’re going to marry Delia and have children to inherit Trebond, since your brother approves so much, and since no lady in her right mind is going to marry someone who keeps _live frogs_ loose in his workshop and sets them on the maids –“

 

“Firstly, that’s just a very exaggerated rumour,” Alanna said, trying not to let her hands sweat through her gloves. “They were whole dried frogs for an experiment, and Thom only threw _one_ out of the workshop because he was frustrated with his work, he didn’t realise there was a maid in his bedroom.” She swallowed. “And how could you expect him to know she had a mortal fear of frogs?”

 

“Well,” Gary said reasonably, assimilating this information. “No. You couldn’t.” He paused. “But you and Delia –”

 

“She knows,” Alanna said.

 

Gary waggled his eyebrows.

 

“If you do that again I will shave those off,” Alanna said brusquely. “She found out. It doesn’t matter how. She suggested the false betrothal, to protect my secret, and to protect her while she looks for a husband who – who likes clever women. Her father was pestering her to marry anyone, so long as he was rich and well-born enough. She’d be miserable for the rest of her life if she did that.”

 

Gary looked as if he’d never thought of it like that before, which he probably hadn’t.

 

“Huh,” he said, eventually. “So why are you telling me?”

 

“I need someone else to instruct me, before the Ordeal,” Alanna said. “I discussed it with Jon. We’ve agreed the instruction will take place after my bath, but we need another knight, and there isn’t another knight who knows.” She swallowed again. “Well, except you.”

 

“Oh, is that all?” Gary said, as if it was nothing. “I’d be honoured.”

 

There was a slight pause, and then Gary started to giggle as if he was unhinged.

 

“What?” Alanna demanded.

 

“I can’t wait to see their _faces_!”

 

 

 

Alanna lived through the ceremony of instruction; she lived through her Ordeal. She fell into Delia’s and Jon’s arms when she staggered out; was laid down on a stretcher of gleaming purple fire and floated back to her room, complaining faintly. She slept. She woke; she slept some more. She dressed for the ceremony of knighting, knelt before her king, received her shield from her brother and her betrothed.

 

She fumbled her cutlery with her bandaged hands at the feast, and touched the Goddess’s stone and saw the orange light around Queen Lianne, and felt that strange compulsion come over her.

 

 _Act. Act now_.

 

She took Faithful and her sword and went to Duke Roger’s rooms, and there, as she should have known there would be, was a spell and a fountain bowl and a parcel of dolls wrapped in a veil, one of them wearing her very own face. No wonder he had not been afraid to leave them unattended, and no wonder they had not been discovered before. Nobody interfered with a powerful mage’s workroom: the consequences were usually a good deal more serious than a flying dried frog.

 

“Of course,” Alanna said softly, and took her suspicions and the dolls to lay before the king.

 

She only returned to herself when she was rubbing balm into her hands and changing into fighting clothes, waiting for the moment of reckoning that had been so long coming. Her friends came to her and clamoured around her; Delia took a seat and waited while Faithful leapt up onto her lap and demanded to be petted. Thom, curiously enough, stood beside Delia, frowning at his hands just a little.

 

“I’m sorry,” Alanna said to Jon, when everyone but the four of them had left, ready for the trial by combat. “I know you love him. But he’s killing your mother.”

 

Jon pulled the queen’s doll from his pocket, worn and still-damp, the silk of its dress stained by the water.

 

“Jon, if you’ve been carrying that around like that your mother will be very sea-sick right now –“

 

“Duke Baird has already broken the links,” Jon said. “But even if I hadn’t received confirmation that this is – not only a possible explanation, but the only plausible explanation, for Mother’s illness, I would believe you, Alanna. You would never lie to me.”

 

“I’m biased,” Alanna said. “I never liked him.”

 

Jon smiled tightly. “Well, your judgement was better than mine, then. Wasn’t it?”

 

“He’s your uncle.”

 

“You’re my best friend.”

 

Alanna lunged forward and hugged him before she could stop herself, and Jon’s arms came around her very tightly.

 

“You’re my best friend,” he repeated, somewhere over her head, “and the most loyal of my subjects, and I know you will always fight for me.”

 

“Always,” Alanna said gruffly, sniffling.

 

“Get this right, Alanna,” Jon said. “With everything we now know about him… Get this right.”

 

Alanna nodded, and watched as Jon left, and her brother walked over to her.

 

They stood together in silence for a few moments.

 

“Get this right, indeed,” Thom said. “No pressure or anything, your highness.”

 

“I always live up to expectations,” Alanna said, wiped her nose, and added: “Or down to them.”

 

Thom snorted. “If you don’t kill him, sweet sister, I will.”

 

“Thom, this is a trial by combat –“

 

“I didn’t say I’d do it right away,” Thom said. “I’d leave a decent interval.”

 

“That’s lèse-majesté –“

 

“It’s how things are done among mages of that class,” Thom said casually. “People try to poison me all the time.”

 

“Are you sure that’s not just your sparkling personality?” Alanna demanded.

 

“Honestly, no.” Thom paused. “Kill him, Alanna, before he gets the chance to kill you.” He looked over at Delia, still demurely perched in the corner, hands folded on top of Faithful, who was curled up in her lap, staring at everything through watchful purple eyes. “I’ll give you two a moment.”

 

“You’re a terrible chaperone,” Alanna said, meaning _thank you_.

 

“I’m your twin,” Thom replied, meaning _you’re welcome_.

 

And then he was gone, and the door closed behind him. Delia didn’t move; Alanna walked slowly over to her seat, and knelt before her, one hand on Delia’s knee.

 

“Move,” she said to Faithful.

 

 _Don’t have to tell me twice_ , Faithful replied snidely, and leapt from Delia’s lap to prowl around the room. Alanna forgot about his presence the moment he was out of the way; she just stared up into Delia’s eyes and tried to line up some words.

 

“I –“ she said, and choked on her breath. “Delia, I –“

 

“I know,” Delia said, touching her cheek very gently. “You don’t have to say anything.”

 

She leaned down and kissed Alanna, one hand curling into Alanna’s tunic. “Just don’t die.”

 

 

Alanna didn’t die.

 

Duke Roger, however, did, and Sir Alan perished with him.

 

 

On the day of her unofficial banishment, Alanna’s escort rode with her just past the City Gates, and met a noblewoman accompanied by a manservant coming the other way; a noblewoman dressed in a familiar dark pink hooded cloak, accompanied by a manservant in Eldorne livery. Alanna glared at Gary, George, Raoul and Jon.

 

“Guilty as charged,” George said pre-emptively, making Raoul snort. “My mother insisted it was only fair.”

 

“Oh, well, if Mistress Eleni said it,” Gary said. “Alanna, you plainly have no choice but to say a proper goodbye to your, um, er, Lady Delia.”

 

“I’m sure my um er Lady Delia will very much appreciate the thoughtfulness,” Alanna said, purely because it made Jon snicker and Gary turn pink with embarrassment.

 

She said goodbye to her friends, and then turned to ride towards the forest, where Delia appeared to have discovered a very interesting patch of winter wildflowers which she felt the need to examine in detail, even though it was not long past dawn and the forest’s shadows were still treacle-thick on the heavy snow. The manservant was holding her horse. He was not looking at Alanna with a particularly friendly eye, but she was coming to expect that.

 

“I’ll be along in two minutes,” Coram grunted, fiddling with the pack mule’s girth, which he had very obviously just undone. “Damned animal.”

 

Alanna rode on until she reached Delia, then dismounted and looped Moonlight’s reins over a branch.

 

Delia was not examining wildflowers. She had found a patch of mushrooms.

 

“Those are poisonous,” Alanna said.

 

“I know,” Delia said, straightening up and pushing her hood back. “Eleni told me about them. They’re only poisonous in the wrong dose – or the right one, I suppose, depending.”

 

Her green eyes were very bright. Alanna licked her lips, and found herself just as wordless as she had been before she faced Duke Roger.

 

“Delia…”

 

“I still know,” Delia said, “and you still don’t have to say anything.” She clasped Alanna’s hands very tightly.

 

“We were going to part ways,” Alanna said wretchedly, “so that you could have the – the right husband, the fief, all of those things you wanted –”

 

“I’ve changed my mind,” Delia said.

 

Alanna smiled helplessly. Tears were pricking at the corners of her eyes. She reached out, and drew Delia into an embrace, her face pressed into the creamy skin of Delia’s neck, and the soft chestnut curls dressed loosely from the crown of her head.

 

“Go and earn your name, Lioness,” Delia murmured. “I’ll still be here when you get back.”

 

“Please keep my brother from throwing frogs at the maids,” Alanna said, because she couldn’t say anything more serious. “He’s doing it on purpose now.”

 

“Don’t worry,” Delia said. “Thom and I understand each other. The palace will still be standing when you return.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

 The day after Alanna left, Lady Cythera walked around the gardens with Delia, and talked polite nothings for an hour. She appeared not to notice any of the stares or whispers.

 

“Your kindness to a lady beset by scandal overwhelms me,” Delia said, wondering what the hell was going on in Lady Cythera’s head. It wasn’t, as Delia was well aware, full of fluff. She had brains.

 

“I knew Roxanne too,” Lady Cythera said baldly. “You’re in a delicate position, and I don’t want you to go the way she did.”

 

Delia paused. “Well,” she said, smoothing her skirts. “I have no intention of doing so either.”

 

“What about your father?”

 

“What he forgets,” Delia said, “though I have explained it to him on several occasions, is that, while he holds Eldorne through spousal right, and while I owe him a daughter’s filial duty, my mother’s money and her fief were settled on _me_.”

 

Lady Cythera looked extremely relieved.

 

“Sir Myles,” Delia said demurely, “has been good enough to recommend an excellent lawyer to me. Females can’t judge these things, you know.”

 

“Quite,” said Lady Cythera. “Are you artistic, Lady Delia? I wonder if you would be interested in joining a sketching party.”

 

“I’ve never been very talented in that direction,” Delia said. “But if you propose to help me rehabilitate my reputation, I’ll learn.”

 

 

Delia went to the sketching party. A lot of the young noblewomen there looked at her oddly, but no-one actually tried to have her removed, and the fact that Lady Amiline wouldn’t talk to her was readily disguised by the fact that Lady Gwynnen wouldn’t _stop_ talking to her. Delia supposed she had just made a new friend.

 

Lady Gwynnen, unlike Lady Cythera, was a stupid woman. But she had a warm heart and a romantic soul, and was inclined to believe that Delia had suffered a tragic disappointment and must be sincerely heartbroken by Alanna’s departure and the breaking of her betrothal. Delia had no idea how she’d arrived at this interpretation, but considering that Lady Gwynnen was also a very convincing gossip and most of the other stories out there were far less palatable, she encouraged it.

 

Lady Gwynnen liked to hunt, which was lucky. Delia also enjoyed the exercise, and when they were hunting, it wasn’t particularly necessary for them to talk to each other.

 

“What a sweet girl,” Delia said to Lady Cythera, while they were having tea and cake and writing their correspondence in companionable silence. Lady Cythera had a stack of pleas for submission to the Queen a mile high, and was winnowing ruthlessly.

 

“Isn’t she,” Lady Cythera said equably. “It would be lovely if she could succeed me in this role. I find her a little too suggestible, though.”

 

Delia stared thoughtfully at Lady Cythera’s demurely bent ash-blonde head. After a few moments, she picked up her pen and dipped it once more in the ink.

 

 _My dearest Alanna_ , she wrote. _I wonder if you know just how many friends you have_.

 

***

 

When Delia missed Alanna, she went out into the practice courts and practised with the bow Alanna had bought her that first Midwinter – the real one, the one that could put an arrow through a man’s heart at forty paces if she needed it to.

 

One of Alanna’s friends, one of those who had been a squire alongside her rather than one of the knights who had treated her like a mascot before they’d treated her like an equal, came out to join her during one of these sessions. He gave her an extremely wide berth and made a great deal of noise to announce his presence.

 

“I’m not going to shoot you, Sir Douglass,” Delia said, unstringing her bow and rolling the cord into a neat circle.

 

“Well, no, I hoped not,” Sir Douglass said frankly. “Er, that bow’s a favourite of yours, isn’t it?”

 

“It is the only one I own,” Delia said. “At least, the only one of any practical use.”

 

“That’s a shame,” Sir Douglass said. “You’re rather a good archer; you should have several, for different occasions.”

 

“I should like that,” Delia said politely.

 

“Anyway, I just came out here to tell you, you’re frightening the pages,” Sir Douglass said.

 

“Dear me,” Delia said, wondering where this was going.

 

“But this is actually a public court and they’re not supposed to be cluttering it up anyway,” Sir Douglass continued hurriedly. “They’re not allowed to spar or shoot outside the pages’ wing. So if any of them give you any trouble – you have a better right to be here than any of them.” He lifted his chin slightly. “And you can tell them I said so.”

 

“Thank you,” Delia said, surprised.

 

Sir Douglass bowed awkwardly, and started to make his escape. He paused mid-stride after a few seconds. “Wait, I meant to ask – have you heard from Alanna?”

 

“She arrived safely in the Desert, and has managed to get herself adopted into a tribe of the Bazhir,” Delia said, even more surprised. “I understand she’s also accidentally become their shaman and adopted three orphans as her students – and she tells me she’s learning to weave, although I have to say, she forgot to explain why.”

 

Sir Douglass blinked. “A little too busy to write, then.”

 

“I don’t know why I ever expected anything else,” Delia said, putting charm and amusement into her voice as a matter of habit.

 

“Well, of course, you know her better than any of us,” Sir Douglass said.

 

By the time Delia had thought of something to say to that, he’d fled.

 

 

“How are you?” Thom asked, several weeks later, as they all lined up to process into the ballroom, ready for the ball to celebrate the arrival of a princess – allegedly here, Delia thought, to visit her godsmother, and far more likely here to make herself agreeable to Prince Jonathan, in the hope of securing the crown matrimonial. Prince Jonathan was escorting Lady Cythera, at least until Princess Josiane arrived; Sir Gary had offered his arm to Lady Cythera’s timid younger sister, as a favour to the lady. Thom was escorting nobody at all, because he had absent-mindedly asked Delia by messenger an hour before and she had had to inform him that her hand had already been solicited by Sir Raoul. All of Alanna’s friends were unsubtly ensuring that she was never without an escort to any ball, soirée, musicale or other social event.

 

This obviously didn’t stop Thom jumping the queue to talk to Delia.

 

“I’m very well, thank you,” Delia said. “Lord Thom, there’s such a thing as protocol. Perhaps we could speak later?”

 

“Protocol?” Thom said, as if he’d never heard of the word.

 

“You’re supposed to be four places down, just in front of Sir Sacherell. You really ought to ask a herald these things before you take a place.”

 

“Oh, who cares about _that_?”

 

“Please yourself, your lordship,” said Delia.

 

Thirty seconds later, she heard a vague rustling of mages’ robes, and glanced over her shoulder. Thom was making his way to his appointed place.

 

“How did you _do_ that?” Raoul demanded.

 

“I promised Alanna I’d keep him in line,” Delia said, which was not an answer.

 

They were all assembled and the first dance was ready to begin when the lady they were all waiting for was announced.

 

“Her Most Serene Highness Josiane Rittevon,” declared the herald, “Duchess of Malubesang, Countess of the Azure Sea, and First Princess of Kypriang, of the Copper Isles.”

 

“I hope,” Thom said, from directly behind Delia’s ear, “she has a name for everyday use.”

 

“Sir Raoul,” Delia said, out of the corner of her mouth, “please have the goodness to stand on Lord Thom’s foot. Whichever one happens to be nearest.”

 

“ _Ouch_!”

 

Princess Josiane floated elegantly down the stairs in air-blue silk embroidered with copper. Delia took note of the light fabric, revealing cut, and consequent gooseflesh. Had no-one told her about the climate in Tortall in winter?

 

Well, chilly or not, Princess Josiane met Prince Jonathan at the foot of the stairs and curtseyed appropriately as he bowed appropriately, and then they all curtseyed or bowed as she was escorted to the king and queen, who received her as a royal cousin, and then the music started up. Prince Jonathan and Princess Josiane took their places at the head of the dance.

 

“May I have this dance?” Lord Thom enquired.

 

“You can have the second dance,” Delia said. “I’ve already committed myself to dance this one with Sir Raoul.”

 

“I hate schottisches.”

 

“Then pick another one,” Delia said, as Raoul led her into her place.

 

“He still treats you like you’re to be his sister-in-law,” Raoul observed.

 

“I know,” Delia said. “I think that once there’s a fixed idea in Thom’s head, nothing short of divine intervention can get it out again.”

 

“Would you have married Alanna?” Raoul asked. “If – well?”

 

“Oh, yes,” Delia said, firmly squashing any hurt back into the box where it came from. “And I expect we would have been very happy together.”

 

“I wish,” Raoul began, and then, mercifully, the steps separated them.

 

 

Though Princess Josiane mingled with the Court very thoroughly, she did not talk to Delia. This was only to be expected. Delia was too much of a scandal and a curiosity for a delicately reared princess to be seen with.

 

Princess Josiane did, however, talk to Thom. Constantly, and at length. Thom found it both puzzling and amusing.

 

“I suppose he had to charm someone,” Delia observed to Sir Myles, one evening.

 

“Do you think she’s charmed?” Sir Myles asked. He was trying to teach Delia to play chess. Delia continued to prefer cards.

 

“No,” Delia said. “I did wonder if it was a ploy to make the prince jealous, but that doesn’t seem to fit the circumstances.”

 

They both watched as Prince Jonathan entered the long gallery the court was amusing itself in, and Princess Josiane drew his attention and was duly borne off for a leisurely stroll around the gallery. Presumably they were admiring all the long-dead Contés in their portraits, or perhaps sharing sweet nothings: Prince Jonathan did seem very struck by her. Delia naturally wasn’t officially aware of the betting in the Upper City or the Lower, but she now had some very interesting friends, and consequently received daily updates on the changing odds.

 

They were increasingly in Princess Josiane’s favour. Delia wondered if the rumours were true about the Rittevons’ instability.  Queen Imajane (the Black God rest her soul) might well have been a perfectly nice woman, but it was no secret that the king she had married was mad, bad, and extremely dangerous to know. As her late and lamented majesty could have attested if she’d survived that tragic fall.

 

“And then I wondered,” Delia continued, playing with a chess piece, “if perhaps she just enjoys the power. It can be very intoxicating. Women of all classes have so little leverage, you know.”

 

Sir Myles looked sharply at her.

 

“But then I remembered that absolutely no lady in possession of her senses would believe Lord Thom to be pining over anything. Or to be susceptible of pining.”

 

Thom was currently doing tricks with a ball of purple fire for the entertainment of several of the squires, which would have been far less dangerous if he were not also reading at the same time.

 

“Very true,” Sir Myles said.

 

 

Thom escorted her to her rooms, much as Alanna used to do, except that he (unlike Alanna) scared the servants, and his attention never gave her butterflies.

 

“Princess Josiane is very assiduous,” Delia observed.

 

“She was talking about the standard of magecraft in the Copper Isles,” Thom said, sounding bored. “She says it’s far higher than it is here. One of Alanna’s friends introduced me to her, that squire she used to swordfight with, so I feel it would be rude to tell her to go away – and then I suppose she is royalty.” He shrugged. “I suggested she visit Carthak if she was so interested.”

 

“Really.”

 

“Yes. And then she pointed out that Tortall has the youngest Master in the Eastern Lands.”

 

“Heavens.”

 

“She seems to have a mania on the subject,” Thom informed Delia. “I don’t see what’s so special about passing those precious exams at seventeen; I could have done it at sixteen, if I’d felt like it.”

 

“Perhaps she likes collecting interesting people.”

 

“Possibly.”

 

Delia didn’t lose sleep over it, but she didn’t forget, either.


	3. Chapter 3

Sir Myles went away to the desert to check on Alanna, and took Prince Jonathan. Princess Josiane continued to sparkle peculiarly, and stuck close to Queen Lianne’s side. She had rapidly become a fixture in the Court. No-one spoke of a date when she might consider leaving.

 

The queen loved Princess Josiane. Looking at her pale face and her thin wrists, Delia could hardly begrudge her the comfort of such a friendship. Everyone said the queen would not live out the year, and if she chose to select her daughter-in-law in those last precious months, well –

 

Well, Delia just hoped she would choose somebody else in the end.

 

Prince Jonathan returned from the desert, with Sir Myles, without Alanna. Delia, who was Alanna’s only semi-regular correspondent, had told Sir Gary and Sir Raoul it would work that way, much though Sir Raoul had held out hope of her return.

 

 _It’s been nearly a year_ , he’d complained.

  
Delia had said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

 

“I’ve adopted Alanna,” Sir Myles told Delia and Thom, bringing them both a glass of sherbet after an energetic country dance, during which Thom had stood on Delia’s toes, ripped the hem of her gown, and lost the beat, twice.

 

“Congratulations,” Delia said.

 

“Welcome to the family,” Thom said. “I’m afraid madness runs in it.”

 

“Never mind,” Sir Myles said equably.

 

Thom was called away by a gaggle of young mages with noble blood who wanted to discuss the relative merits of the university at Carthak and the City of the Gods, and Delia found herself drinking sherbet with Sir Myles, and refraining very carefully from asking questions.

 

“I found Alanna very well,” Sir Myles said. “But she misses you.”

 

Delia stared into the bottom of her sherbet. “I miss her too,” she said.

 

“Did you fall in love before or after you agreed to marry each other?” Sir Myles enquired, too understanding, too gentle. Delia had heard enough painful insinuations, suffered enough remarks behind her back, had enough servants give notice with disgust in their voices, that she flinched in the face of such kindness.

 

“After,” Delia said. “So I suppose, in that sense, it was very traditional.”

 

***

 

Somewhere in Maren, Liam Ironarm tried to flirt with Alanna the Lioness.

 

“Ah,” Alanna said, looking at him with a palpable air of confusion. His tricks were a lot blunter than Delia’s, and his innuendo didn’t set her off balance in the same enjoyably nerve-wracking way. “Sorry, I don’t think –“

 

“So that rumour is also true,” the Shang Dragon said equably, sitting back in his chair and reverting to a more normal, if equally friendly, manner.

 

“What do you mean by that?” Alanna asked, eyes narrowing. She didn’t want to draw steel in Myles’ friend’s inn, but there were any number of directions the Dragon’s sentence could go in, and many of them were unacceptable.

  
“Relax,” the Dragon said. “I’ve no intention of insulting you. Further east we’re not so parochial about these things, you know.”

 

There was a pause.

 

“She must be quite something,” the Dragon observed, “to keep your attention, a year and hundreds of miles away.”

 

Alanna had all of Delia’s letters upstairs, wrapped in waxed cloth. They were getting less frequent, due to the increasing distance between them, and Alanna was gloomily aware that if she went further east they might stop reaching her entirely.

 

“She is,” Alanna said.

 

“Well,” the Dragon said. “Let’s drink to your lady. May she still be there when you get back.”

 

Alanna’s smile twitched at the memory of Delia’s promise. “She will be.”

 

Liam Ironarm raised his eyebrows at her confidence, but he didn’t argue.

 

 

***

 

“What possible use could Princess Josiane have for a revenant?” Thom demanded, bursting in on Delia at breakfast.

 

“Thom, this is highly improper,” Delia complained. “I’m doing my best to re-establish myself as a lady of the court, and –”

 

“A revenant, Delia,” Thom said, flinging himself down into a seat and taking a breakfast roll without asking. Delia eyed him resentfully. “A creature of the grave, drawn back from the Black God’s embrace. And besides, you’re my sister-in-law.”

 

Delia took a fortifying gulp of tea, and ignored the second element of this ridiculous speech. There was no explaining to Thom that, whatever happened, she could not marry Alanna – she had, in fact, received unsolicited representations from various priests on the subject - but it might be worth trying to explain that she preferred her breakfast to be free of dead bodies.

 

“Why would I want to discuss revenants over the breakfast table?” Delia asked, as a preliminary step.

 

“Because you wanted to know why Princess Josiane was so interested in me,” Thom said. “Yesterday, at that madrigal you couldn’t be bothered to attend –”

 

“I had a headcold,” Delia said, brandishing a besmirched handkerchief. “I am _ill_. My digestion is already upset, and all this talk of rot -”

 

“- she started goading me, and eventually, I said I could do anything her precious Denmarie the Earth-shaker could do.”

 

“What?”

 

“Raise the dead,” Thom said, far too cheerfully. Delia put her knife and fork down. “I told her I could raise the dead, if I wanted to.”

 

“But why does she want you to?” Delia demanded.

 

“I don’t know. That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

 

Delia emptied the teapot into her cup. “Are you going to do it?”

 

“I could. It would be an interesting challenge. Are you going to eat that breakfast roll?”

 

“No,” Delia said. “Did she have an individual in mind?”

 

“She didn’t say,” Thom said absently. “Of course, it would have to be a mage, and I suppose someone freshly dead, or – no; Denmarie raised someone who had been dead for six months. Recent wouldn’t cut it. Someone very well embalmed, I suppose, or it’d put everyone off their dinner. A powerful personality is traditionally considered necessary, since a strong character survives the depletion of the spirit better –”

 

“Thom,” Delia said. “Princess Josiane has just baited you into agreeing to resurrect a mage with a strong character whose body was well cared for at death.”

 

Thom stopped, and looked thoughtful. “When you put it like that,” he said finally, “it does sound remarkably as if she wants me to bring Duke Roger back to life.”

 

“Exactly,” Delia said. “Either the lady is perverse, or she wants to do something very peculiar to the succession.”

 

“ _Very_ peculiar, considering the way she’s fishing for the prince,” Thom remarked.

 

“All of this is peculiar,” Delia said. “I’m not going to cavil at a little thing like that.”

 

They gazed at each other for a long moment.

 

“Well, I didn’t agree to do it,” Thom said at last. “Necromancy is illegal and a waste of my time. I just said I could.”

 

“Do you think she could find someone else to do it?” Delia asked.

 

“Maybe,” Thom said, and shrugged. “Some of those a few years older than me would probably be capable of the task – if they had the aptitude and a sufficient well of power to draw on. Or, I suppose, if the duke made preparations so that the return would be easier. I really ought to have checked, but I was a bit preoccupied at the time.”

 

Delia tapped her fingers on the table. “Could you check now?”

 

“Oh yes,” Thom said.

 

“Without accidentally bringing him back from the grave yourself?”

 

“Almost definitely.”

 

“Well, why don’t you do that?” Delia said, ignoring the ‘almost’ part. “Alanna would be terribly upset if she came back home to find that Duke Roger had come back to life.”

 

“Good point,” Thom said, getting to his feet. Delia hoped he wasn’t about to go to the catacombs right now. “How is Alanna, by the way?”

 

“Very well. Travelling into Maren. There was an unfortunate incident with a cursed sword and she thinks she’s found a quest.” Delia sighed. “You ought to write to your sister yourself, you know.”

 

“I do, occasionally,” Thom said carelessly. “But she likes your letters better – and in any case, you know, we’re twins. We may be apart from each other, but we’re never very far.”

 

***

 

Delia was enjoying a select dinner at Sir Myles’ townhouse when Thom invited himself in, and said so loudly that he would wait in the hall until Sir Myles was at leisure to see him that it was quite impossible for Sir Myles not to invite him in for dinner. He was, for once in his life, polite – and so clearly buzzing with energy and enthusiasm that Delia eyed him with great suspicion. He was witty, clever, and charming, and if half the things he said would undoubtedly cause backlash when they reached the ears of their subjects, well, that was a problem for later.

 

He was, in fact, exhausting, and he successfully exhausted everyone else out of the house within an hour, at which point he turned on Delia, gleaming.

 

“You were _absolutely right_ ,” he said. “I went down to the catacombs and Duke Roger’s body is totally smothered in spells for the Sorceror’s Sleep. I had to look hard for them, but they’re there! He’s not properly dead. Any half-baked necromancer could bring him back!”

 

There was a stunned silence.

 

“I think I would like a glass of port,” Sir Myles said reflectively. “I’ll take it in the library. And then you two can explain to me what on earth you’re up to.”

 

“Up to, indeed,” Thom said, drawing himself up to his full height. “I have nothing to do with this at all, beyond being the target of Princess Josiane’s leading questions.”

 

“Princess Josiane?” Sir Myles repeated, and looked at Delia.

 

Delia, who had nothing more to add, nodded.

 

“Do you know,” Sir Myles said to Delia, “I think I shall order the bottle.”

 

 

In the course of their discussions they established the following points:

 

  1. Any ‘reasonably powerful’ mage, in Thom’s estimation, could reactivate the Sorceror’s Sleep and revive Roger, but they’d need to store power or draw it from somewhere in order to do it.
  2. Thom, for instance, claimed he could do it if he drew on Alanna.



2a. Thom was categorically forbidden from drawing on Alanna for any magical purpose short of saving his life.

  1.    Thom had no idea who might have the right combination of talents and temptations to take on such a task.
  2.    Sir Myles had no idea why anyone would want Duke Roger back.
  3.    Delia had no idea why Princess Josiane specifically would want Duke Roger back.



 

“I shall have to make enquiries,” Sir Myles said thoughtfully. “King Oron is… not a pleasant man, and highly paranoid. And he is moderately obsessed with trade tariffs at Tortallan ports. Additionally, Copper Islander boats, probably privateers rather than pirates, raid Tortall’s western coast on a regular basis.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “It’s very possible that King Oron would have something to gain by disrupting the Tortallan line of succession.”

 

“But why use his daughter?” Delia demanded. “Men don’t value women as that kind of tool.”

 

“That would be an extremely good reason to use her,” Sir Myles pointed out. “But he’s not imaginative enough for that. If I had to guess, Princess Josiane’s actions are at least partly on her own initiative. Everyone around King Oron seeks to please him.”

 

“By disrupting the government of _an entire country_.”

 

Sir Myles shrugged gently. “I have spoken to Princess Josiane. I don’t think she has much concept of scale.” He finished his glass of port, and chivalrously poured another one for Delia first. “Additionally, we must consider the simple answer. As the queen’s godsdaughter, and now her preferred candidate for Prince Jonathan’s wife, Princess Josiane has access, and therefore opportunity.”

 

“But if she were to marry Prince Jonathan –”

 

“Who says she wants to?” Thom asked. “Maybe she just wants to rule.”

 

Delia paused. Then she rubbed at one temple and groaned. “I should have thought of that. I didn’t want to marry him, either.”

 

“The Copper Isles’ succession, under the luarin, prioritises sons over daughters,” Sir Myles said, thoughtfully. “Princess Josiane is the second daughter, but Princess Nuritin is married, has lost her place in the succession, and keeps very closely to her husband’s lands on Malubesang. There is of course the younger princess, Imajane, but she’s hardly more than a child.  There is one son older than Princess Josiane, and three ahead of her in the succession – not to mention any boys Queen Elspetra might produce.” Sir Myles sipped at his port. “But Deniau and Valmar are also children, and Hazarin has little strategic sense.”

 

“It sounds as if she has no chance at all at the throne,” Thom observed. Delia couldn’t help but agree. “She might win her father’s favour by making a mess of Tortall.”

 

“She might,” Sir Myles agreed, and then said nothing for a very long time. He stared into the fire. Delia stared at her hands.

 

Thom took a book off Sir Myles’ shelves, slung his legs over the arm of his chair, and started to read.

 

“King Oron,” Sir Myles said pensively, “is afraid of mages. He will not have them in the Grey Palace. And what does Princess Josiane do, immediately after arriving in Corus, in a palace where mages are not merely tolerated, but welcome? Why, she befriends every mage she comes across, especially the young and impressionable, and attempts to resurrect one of the most powerful mages Tortall has ever seen.”

 

There was a period of reflective quiet, eventually broken by Thom heaving an enormous sigh.

 

“I suppose you’re right, Delia,” he said. “We’d better clear up this nonsense before Alanna gets home.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

Delia had thought she would be celebrating a lonely Midwinter, with no festivities other than the official Court ones, but then a parcel accompanied by a note was brought to her door by a page.

 

“From Lord Thom, my lady,” said the page, who was experiencing some difficulty in meeting her eye. “And he says that dinner will be at two bells, if you’d care to attend.”

 

Surprised and touched – she’d bought him a mage’s work robe with a lot of pockets and spells against accidental damage, by way of a hint to stop dripping acid on his Court clothes, but hadn’t really expected a gift in return – Delia opened the parcel immediately.

 

 _I tried to think of what Alanna would get you_ , Thom had written, _but I really don’t know what women like. And then I remembered that she bought you a bow, so I put these together. Let me know how you like them._

 

Inside the package were a dozen Raven Armoury arrows: six light hunting heads, and six armour-piercing broadheads. Delia picked one up by the shaft, and touched the arrowhead very gently.

 

It flashed purple.

 

“ _Spelled arrows_ ,” she breathed, and went straight down to the practice courts to try them out.

 

Sir Gary was also shooting at the targets. Delia wished him a happy Midwinter before taking her place and trying out her new arrows.

 

They trailed purple fire, burned a hole in the target, and shone so brightly they left flares on the backs of Delia’s eyelids.

 

“Midwinter present from Lord Thom,” Delia explained to Sir Gary, who was having some difficulty closing his mouth. “I believe he spelled the arrows, rather than actually making them.”

 

“Well,” Sir Gary said faintly. “I suppose you can’t choose your… family?”

 

“Quite,” Delia said pleasantly.

 

She dressed well for Midwinter dinner, even though she knew perfectly well Thom would be wearing something fiendishly opulent but dishevelled and badly mended.

 

“Thank you for my lovely present,” she said, as the manservant opened the door to her. “So thoughtful of you.”

 

“I hope you haven’t shot anyone with them,” Thom said. “It’s possible they may explode. Your victims, that is, not the arrows.”

 

“I knew what you meant,” said Delia.

 

***

 

“I hope Sir Alanna is well,” Lady Cythera said, while they were working on their correspondence once more. The winter rains beat down on the gardens outside Lady Cythera’s study.

 

“I don’t know,” Delia said. “The hill roads east of Maren will be impassable till spring, and if she keeps going east, the spring floods will cut letters off too.”

 

“Do you think she will keep going east?”

 

“Logically she has to stop before Sarain, which is in the middle of a civil war.” Delia sighed. “But no, I’m not entirely sure that will put her off. Rumour has it she started travelling with the Shang Dragon in Maren. The Warlord would be a fool to pick a fight with them.”

  

“Very true,” Lady Cythera murmured. “So you haven’t received any word from her since…?”

 

“A few weeks ago,” Delia said. “It was extremely late. She sent it in November.”

 

“And you are still writing to her?”

 

Delia nodded.

 

Lady Cythera looked at her for a long moment.

 

“You knew Roxanne,” Delia reminded her. “You know women can love each other as well as any man can.”

 

“I know women in general can,” Lady Cythera said, blushing – it was probably the most scandalous thing she’d ever said aloud. “I just didn’t think you could.”

 

Delia tried to be insulted, but she knew all too well how she’d conducted herself towards Lady Cythera and… actually, an alarming number of other people, before she’d entangled herself with Alanna. “I suppose that’s fair.” She tapped her pen against her writing desk. “Alanna has an amazing way of changing things.”

 

“I think I heard you say she was on a quest,” Lady Cythera said.

 

Delia did not permit her face to change. She had said that once to Thom, who would have told no-one, and once to Lady Ilane of Mindelan, who wasn’t precisely a chatterbox.

 

But then, _everyone_ talked to Lady Cythera.

 

“Something of the sort, I suppose,” Delia said calmly. “She’s chasing rumours of the Dominion Jewel. But that’s not for everyone to know, Lady Cythera.”

 

“Quite,” Lady Cythera agreed.

 

Delia nodded at her stack of papers. “More petitions?”

 

“Wedding preparations,” Lady Cythera said, and her mouth tightened just the tiniest bit. “It will all take at least a year to organise, of course.”

 

A year. Could Princess Josiane find someone to resurrect Roger in that time?

 

“You must know Princess Josiane very well, of course,” Delia observed. “You spend so much time with Queen Lianne.”

 

“We’re a little acquainted,” Lady Cythera said blandly.

 

“I haven’t been presented.”

 

“I’m sure that could be arranged.”

 

“I’m equally sure it would be better for all parties if I didn’t try.”

 

“For _all_ parties,” Lady Cythera repeated, with a faint emphasis on the _all_ and her eyes on Delia’s. “And that’s not for everyone to know either, Lady Delia.”

 

“Quite,” Delia said dryly.

 

 

Delia played chess with Sir Myles the next evening. She was no longer losing quite as badly, and occasionally agreed to play with other people, but she still preferred cards. She had been counting cards since she could count on her hands, and it was so much easier to read card players than to read a chessboard.

 

“Lady Cythera hates Princess Josiane,” Delia said. “And she’s working on plans for a wedding in a year’s time.”

 

“Prince Jonathan hasn’t proposed yet,” Sir Myles said. “And Queen Lianne won’t last that long.”

 

“I think we’d better tell Thom to hurry up and find this hypothetical necromancer.” Delia’s hand hovered over a knight; she hesitated for a second, then moved it decisively. “Unless you think Alanna’s friend George is more likely to be of help.”

 

“Possibly,” Sir Myles said. “But he is currently a little preoccupied. Business troubles.”

 

 

“No, I still haven’t found anything,” Thom said, at dinner the next day. “I’m focussing on students who were thrown out of the City of the Gods, or of the University in Carthak. Necromancy is an expulsion offence, and you’d never be able to get a respectable position as a mage with _that_ on your record. He – or she - is certainly not anywhere any respectable mage in the Upper City knows about.”

 

“So I’m thinkin’ you’ll be wantin’ me to look into the disrespectable ones,” Alanna’s fascinating friend George said, with some resignation. Delia’s previous acquaintance with him had been limited, but she thought he must have known the twins for some years, to sound like that. “That’s all right. But my movements are that bit constrained just now, lad, with Claw hangin’ around like a bad smell.”

 

“How picturesque,” Delia commented.

 

“Not particularly,” George Cooper said grimly. “Scrawny cove with a great purple scar across his face, one eye, brown hair, and greasy manners. Liar and a cheat. Got a posh accent from the Lakes half the time, fakery the other half, and he’s bribing and blackmailing my boys and girls into doing what they oughtn’t.”

 

Delia had been well brought up and therefore did not drop her fork. “A purple scar, did you say? Like an acid scar?”

 

“Could be,” George Cooper said, looking curiously at her. “Why?”

 

“How old is Claw?”

 

“Scar makes it difficult to tell, but – early twenties?”

 

“What have you noticed, my dear?” Sir Myles said, raising his voice to speak to the younger generation for the first time in some minutes; he’d been chatting urbanely with Mistress Eleni, who seemed for some reason not wholly clear to Delia to be staying in the house, rather than her own comfortable home.

 

Delia turned to him. “Ralon of Malven was disowned for trying to rape his father’s bailiff’s daughter,” she said. “Mistress Anala’s maid threw acid over his face to stop him, scarring him and causing him to lose one eye. Malven is in the Lakes region, on the edge of the Hills. It borders Eldorne – we sent men to chase Ralon from the bounds of both fiefs. Nobody has heard from him for years.”

 

“Ralon of Malven,” Sir Myles said slowly. “We will have to confirm that. Lady Delia, if this is true, you had better be very careful. Ralon of Malven left page service after Alanna beat and humiliated him for bullying her. I wouldn’t put it past him to hurt you in order to hurt her.”

 

Delia took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap.

 

“Alanna taught you how to use a proper bow,” George Cooper said. “Did she teach you how to use a knife?”

 

Delia shook her head.

 

“Very well,” said Eleni Cooper. “ _I’ll_ teach you how to use a knife. There can be no half measures with this Claw, Lady Delia – he came to my house to attack me, and that breaks one of the most fundamental rules of the Rogue.”

 

“I could just make you a crossbow for your birthday,” Thom offered. “With bolts to match the arrows.”

 

“The ones that may or may not cause people to explode?” Delia enquired.

 

“Why not?”

 

George put his head in his hands.

 

“I think I shall accept Mistress Eleni’s extremely generous offer,” Delia said.

 

***

 

The Dancing Dove was quiet - dangerously quiet, with a worryingly hysterical undertone to any laughter or talking that did rise above a quiet murmur. George allowed his gaze to wander, asking himself who among those here tonight had been persuaded, paid or petrified into doing Claw’s will.

 

Then his Sight showed him three balls of purple Gift being juggled in the gallery high above. It also showed him that the person behind the stunt was cloaked, and that, to anyone else’s eyes, there was nothing there at all.

 

George did not permit his expression to change. Instead he got up, excusing himself to Marek and Anci with a cheerful wink, and went up the back stairs - the ones not visible from the common bar. Thom of Trebond met him at the top of the stairs.

 

“Juggling?” George asked. “Really?”

 

“Well, I had to do something to get your attention,” Thom said, far too reasonably.

 

George grunted. “What’re you doing breaking into the Rogue?”

 

“I wanted to know if you’d heard anything more about that student I asked you to look into.” Thom grimaced. “Delia was asking me, and I don’t want her meddling with necromancers. Alanna would be furious if she came home and Delia’d got herself killed.”  
  
“She would that,” George said mildly. He no longer needed to suppress a pang at the thought of Alanna’s closeness to the Court lady, but talking about it did feel a bit like pressing on a bruise, sometimes. “And you’d be angry, wouldn’t you.”  


“Very,” Thom replied.

 

“Well, I haven’t found your necromancer.” George indicated his rooms with one hand. “Come in, have a drink, and tell me more about him. All you said was that he was very short and brown-haired and named Blayce. That’s not much to go on, lad, not in a city like this, not even when I _haven’t_ got traitors in the Rogue.”  


“No, I know,” Thom said, as George closed the door behind them both. Inquisitive as ever, he was already poking around.

 

“Don’t touch that. F’r all you know a knife’ll pop out of it.”  


“Alanna will also be furious if you get me killed,” Thom pointed out, but he stopped prodding at the drawer in question.

 

“Happen she’ll say you had it comin’.” George poured out two glasses of brandy, and set them down on the table as he sat down. “So. Blayce. He got a last name?”

 

“Younger,” Thom said, collapsing inelegantly into a chair. “Blayce Younger. And he is young. A few years older than me and Alanna. He came to the City of the Gods from Galla as a child - no more than thirteen - and was expelled four years ago, aged twenty.” He sipped at the brandy - whatever else he was careless with, he knew how to appreciate good food and drink - and rubbed a hand over his coppery hair. “I remember some kind of expulsion scandal at the time, but it was kept quiet.”

 

“Nosy as you are, you didn’t find out what it was?”  


“That was the summer of the Tusaine War,” Thom complained. “I was preoccupied.”

 

“Fair.”

 

“But I’ve been talking to Master Si-cham,” Thom continued. “He’s an irritating know-it-all -” Thom’s mouth twisted in a sneer - “but once Myles persuaded him I was finally putting myself to public use, he agreed to help.”

 

George maintained a straight face.

 

“He told me the details. Blayce Younger was expelled for necromancy, which is a nasty sordid thing to happen in a Mithran monastery, and that’s one reason why it was hushed up. The other -” Thom lifted a finger meaningfully - “is that Blayce wasn’t _caught_ , and that’s unusual. Most necromancy is messy and hard to miss. Blayce found a way to do it quickly and quietly, without creating the kind of racket you’d expect, and he was tidy. He was also convinced he’d stumbled on a use for… shall we say, the kind of members of society most nobles like to call the undeserving poor? Alcoholics, the maimed, orphans without family…”

 

“You paint a picture, lad,” George said, eyeing the bottle and helping himself to a little more.

 

“He took his results to the Masters, expecting praise. His work, as Si-cham described it to me, was very different from what you’d need to do to break a Sorceror’s Sleep and raise our late and highly unlamented duke. But it indicates he has the technical skill and the ability to preserve the spirit, which is the key thing.” Thom shook his head. “Si-cham said the thing that still chilled him was the fact that Blayce didn’t understand _why_ he was expelled. He didn’t understand why the Masters were angry.” Thom’s thin mouth set in a grim line. “At least when I broke the rules I knew what I was doing. And I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately. Nor did I lie to myself about what I was doing.”  
  


“You’re a shinin’ moral beacon.”

 

“I’m also not responsible for a minimum of fifteen disappeared children.” Thom took a gulp of the brandy, which George forgave him for, under the circumstances.

 

“Nasty man. And you’re sure it’s him?”  
  
“I’m not, but he’s the best candidate.” Thom rubbed his mouth. “Interestingly, Si-cham said that Blayce was last seen headed for Port Caynn.”

 

“Lots of ships for the Copper Isles from there,” George observed.

 

“Mm. I’ll tell Myles and Delia tomorrow; they might be able to trace him.”

 

“Bit of a surprise, Lady Delia turnin’ out to be so sharp.”

 

“Not really,” Thom said casually. “Not when I think about everything Alanna’s told me about her over the years. She’s got a sly streak.”

 

“More’n a streak.” George rubbed his eyes. “Did this Master Si-cham give you a description?”

 

“Yes.” Thom retrieved a piece of paper from his sleeve and slid it across the table to George; it was written in the plain, clear secretary hand of the palace scribes, but George knew Thom could imitate that perfectly. “I also asked him to come here. Blayce Younger was bound over never to attempt or carry out any act of necromancy again, and if it’s proven that he has, well -”

 

Thom drew one hand across his neck and made a very vivid _ckk_ noise at the back of his throat.

 

“The Mithran masters can pass judgement on him, is what you’re sayin’.”

 

Thom nodded. “But Si-cham needs to be here to attest that the previous judgement took place. Otherwise it’s just gossip, and he might find a way of claiming it wasn’t him, or hiding that he did it - which he might get away with, without Si-cham to identify his work.” Thom shrugged. “If we can find him I can hold him until Si-cham gets here and the full majesty of Mithran law can creak into effect, but Si-cham might as well be on his way.”

 

“Well, we’re no closer to findin’ him yet.” George re-read the description. It was detailed, at least, although its emphasis on how nondescript Blayce looked and sounded, besides the height and the Gallan accent - which had probably smoothed off significantly, if he’d been travelling - was depressing. “And if he’s that neat in his doin’s we might have some trouble.”

 

“I’ll be looking too, of course.” Thom finished his glass. “I also came to see if I can help you with Claw.”

 

George shook his head. “No sign of him, except when he pops up at the Dove and acts loyal. He’s not like to show his face around the palace, even if it is marked - he spent long enough there he won’t have been completely forgotten, it’s too much a risk - and a noble’s not like to boast about having the likes of him in their pay. So unless you care to try a few scrying spells…”

 

“It’s not my specialty, but I’ll do what I can.” Thom ran his hands through his hair again. “I can cook you up something to trace him with, if you can get it on to him.”

 

“Possible,” George said. “There’s a lass or two he has an eye for as would do it.”

 

Thom grinned. “I knew you’d find a way.” He stood. “I’ll be getting back. I only meant to bring you the description, really.”

 

“Thanks, Thom.” George tucked the description, now memorised, into his pocket; he could burn it later.

 

“We’ll get out of this,” Thom said confidently.

 

“Alanna would be proud of you,” George said.

 

Thom made a face at him.  “Oh, hush,” he said, and slowly dematerialised.

 

George stared. “Well,” he said to himself, as the last violet glimmers faded. “At least that explains how the menace got in.”


	5. Chapter 5

On a freezing afternoon in early February, they ran out of time.

 

Thom saw him first; Delia was talking to Cythera and Gwynnen and Roxanne, newly returned to Court to visit with her Queenscove sister while Wilina brought her oldest son to page training. She was concentrating - it was always necessary to concentrate on being perfectly mild and proper in these conversations, especially as Roxanne hadn’t seen her for more than a year and knew only the damaging rumours about her - and she ignored Thom’s sharp intake of breath and tug on her sleeve. He often hung around her conversations, mostly because he enjoyed watching her work, and because he liked to make it that little bit more difficult. He was, in a backwards sort of way, helping: the fact that Delia could force Thom to behave did wonders, in a small way, for her popularity among her fellow nobles.

 

She ignored the second tug, too. But then she felt the atmosphere in the gallery change, and when Thom took her elbow in his hand and physically turned her, she moved with him.

 

Five minutes ago, the gallery had been full of mostly young, generally idle nobles, chiefly women, escaping the weather to talk with their friends, embroider, read or play music in the company of the Queen. Queen Lianne had not yet arrived, but she was often delayed by increasingly demanding medical care; there was nothing surprising in that. Cythera had been on high alert waiting for her to walk in; Cythera’s embroidery lay on a small table beside the unobtrusively elegant, well-upholstered chair near the fire that was Queen Lianne’s personal seat, and Cythera had primed the harpist with the music for Her Majesty’s favourite spring melodies.

 

The Queen had walked in: accompanied on one side by Duke Baird, and on the other by a dead man.

 

Thom let go of Delia’s elbow and offered her his arm, as if he were to escort her, the way Alanna used to. Delia took it, trying not to grip too hard and failing. Her hands were clammy.

 

They all curtsied or bowed, according to inclination, for Queen Lianne’s entrance. But Delia had learned to notice things even more vividly than she had done as a junior débutante with everything to play for, and even with her eyelids demurely lowered she could see the triumph on Duke Roger’s face.

 

“How did he do it,” Thom muttered. “ _How did he do it_? I’ve been watching the catacombs like a _hawk_. No-one unauthorised has been in or out for _weeks_ -”

 

Delia stamped on his foot under cover of her skirts, but it was too late.

 

“You knew this would happen?” Cythera breathed, making a sign against evil in the shelter of her primrose skirts.

  
“We feared it,” Delia said softly.

 

“We just ran out of time to stop it,” Thom said grimly.

 

“I can see that,” Cythera said tartly, but she had her duty, and slowly she glided forward to greet Queen Lianne, to settle her into her seat and to take the smaller chair beside her. Delia knew how Cythera’s job worked; even now she would be naming the supplicants who would make their way to Her Majesty, priming Queen Lianne with details and suggested courses of action. She also knew that Cythera set the tone for the younger and more active nobles, and took it from the Queen herself. When Cythera exchanged a few words and a look with the Queen, and then offered Duke Roger the slightest curtsey and bow of the head possible, Delia could read the starting point for every interaction that would happen here today.

  
“What is she doing?” Thom hissed. “The man’s a traitor to the Crown and a revenant!”

 

“She’s taking orders, Thom,” Delia said calmly. “The Queen has required her to treat Duke Roger with basic courtesy but no more. He’s back, and he’s not going to be executed outright. But he’s not to be trusted.” She paused, and lowered her voice. “This is probably His Majesty’s work. He never wanted to believe his nephew was guilty. No, Thom, _shut up_.”

 

“This is not safe for you,” Thom said. “Roger knows you were Alanna’s betrothed, before she was unmasked. He will try to get to you to get to her.”

  
“The last thing I can afford to do now is leave, Thom,” Delia said. “That would be profoundly stupid. I’m not stupid.”  


Thom gave her a long, slow look from eyes that only sometimes reminded her of Alanna’s. “No,” he said. “I know that.” His arm tensed. “Be careful. I don’t want Alanna to get angry at me because you decided to try yourself against a sorceror returned from the grave, for Mithros’ sake.”

 

“Likewise,” Delia said, squeezing his arm.

 

Lady Roxanne moved up behind them. “Do you know what all of this is about, Delia of Eldorne?”

 

Delia felt all her vertebrae lock into place. She had been friends with Lady Roxanne, and sometimes a little more; but they hadn’t really spoken since Roxanne had made her convenient marriage, and Delia couldn’t gauge what she wanted. “If I did, Lady Roxanne, I’d have stopped it before it ever got this far.”

 

Lady Roxanne hummed, and said nothing for a few moments. Gwynnen was chattering nervously with Cythera’s little sister, too bright and too quick, catching the tone of the brief conversations picking up slowly around the room. “Alanna of Trebond has been the making of you, Delia.”

 

Delia did not jump or twitch, or give any other outward sign that the breath had just frozen in her throat.

 

“I’m going to find my sister and ask what she and Baird know about this,” Lady Roxanne said. “I’ll let you know if she says anything of interest.”

 

“Can I suggest you take little Lady Isabela with you?” Delia said, referring to the younger Elden girl. “She’s going to smash that teacup and die of mortification.”

 

“These children,” Lady Roxanne said, with disdain. “When you and I came to Court, Delia, the nuns raised girls with thicker skins.”

 

Delia felt a hysterical laugh tickling at her throat: she let it out in modified, giggling form. Lady Roxanne huffed behind her, pleased, and she and Delia curtseyed to each other as Lady Roxanne scooped up seventeen-year-old Isabela and removed her from the room.

 

Across the room, Cythera made a slight but definite gesture. Delia blinked, and saw Cythera make it again.

 

“You can’t go over there,” Thom said definitely. Now he reminded her of Alanna.

  
“I haven’t been received by the Queen for a year,” Delia said. “I have to. Cythera is trying to help me, Thom.”

 

“By inviting you into a vipers’ nest?”

 

“By securing my position in front of the man my betrothed killed in a trial of combat, Thom. To make hurting me more costly.”

 

“I’m coming with you,” Thom said.

 

“Try to look a bit less _murder-like_ , then. Is it hereditary?” Delia started the slow, elegant glide over to the small knot where power currently rested in the room.

 

“It goes with the insanity,” Thom grumbled.

 

“ _Behave_ ,” Delia said, under her breath, and fixed a small, sweet smile on her face.

 

She curtseyed deeply to Queen Lianne, and sank delicately onto the seat that Cythera offered her.

 

“Lady Cythera tells me that you have been offering archery lessons to my ladies, Lady Delia,” the queen said.

 

Delia bowed her head, and wondered how long Lady Cythera had been planning this. In truth, only Cythera, Isabela and Gwynnen had taken up her offer of instruction, but very probably more of the young women would if the Queen herself registered her approval. “I have, your Majesty. My mother taught me as a girl, and I taught my younger cousins, before I came to live at Court. I enjoy the exercise.”

 

“I was a very reasonable archer myself, as a girl,” Queen Lianne said, and smiled. “My brother taught me. It is a shame this winter has been so damp and cold. I should have liked to join the hunt.”

 

Queen Lianne hadn’t joined the hunt since the Sweating Sickness, and was plainly too ill to do so. Delia flicked through several possibilities in her mind, and decided that Queen Lianne was trying to emphasise a strength she did not have.

 

Her Majesty might have a traitor returned from the grave in her midst; she might be forced to recognise him as the nephew she had helped to raise. But she wasn’t going to allow herself to be frightened, which meant she had considerably more strength of character than nine-tenths of her court.

 

“We would have been honoured, your Majesty,” Delia said softly, while all of this was ticking round her head. “In the meantime, if you would like to come and observe our practices, you would be most welcome.”

 

“I would enjoy that,” Queen Lianne said, although Delia was ninety-five percent certain that Queen Lianne still thought she was a shockingly loose woman and an undesirable scandal waiting to happen. Delia rather admired her for that: the willingness to take any tool to hand reminded her of herself, or of Eleni Cooper, who could flatten a grown man with a single thread pulled from her skirt. “Do ask Cythera when would be most appropriate.”

 

Delia bowed her head. “Your Majesty.”

 

“And I believe,” Queen Lianne said, speaking now over Delia’s head, “you have not been presented to my nephew, Lord Thom. Roger, you will know of Lord Thom of Trebond and his remarkable achievements.”

 

Delia and Cythera met each other’s eyes, and Delia prayed briefly to the Mother that Thom had been paying attention to Delia’s lectures on Court manners and soft power. Otherwise this could end explosively.

 

“Circumstances militated against us, your Majesty,” Thom said, bowing slightly, as between sorcerors of equal power. That nasty sneer he used in times of anger was tugging at his mouth, and there was a smirk Delia knew all too well hidden in his voice - _hello, Duke Roger; my twin sister foiled your plots and killed you dead despite being a new knight and a half-trained mage, have you come to see if her brother can put you back in the grave?_ \- but superficially he was polite enough. Delia addressed a few words about the weather to Cythera at random, who replied with equal fluency and equal lack of interest, their eyes on each other and their attention on the confrontation happening directly behind them.

 

Delia risked a glance up. Queen Lianne had a book on her lap - devotions to the Great Mother Goddess, with an illustration that suggested the passage she was reading under Duke Roger’s nose was a tribute to feminine strength - and Duke Baird looked as if all of this was giving him a headache and he’d rather be back in the infirmary. She did not dare look at Thom and Roger, but she could feel the atmosphere thickening the way it did when Alanna used magic, only multiplied by a factor of ten. They were testing each other.

 

They were also talking about _libraries in Carthak_ , of all things, which suggested that noble ladies weren’t the only ones who cloaked their fights in irrelevancies.

 

Delia and Cythera were now discussing, entirely on automatic, the best sleeve cuts for freedom of movement in archery. Queen Lianne added a word or two in favour of the broad trumpet sleeves she had worn as a girl, cut to three-quarter length to accommodate the exercise, which proved that she was paying attention, but Delia was absolutely certain that she was more focussed on the careful confrontation happening right next to her.

 

Delia was also beginning to think that calling them over hadn’t just been Cythera’s idea. Cythera never did anything without Queen Lianne’s permission. While Cythera had very clearly laid groundwork for this presentation some time ago, it had been Queen Lianne who had required her to call Delia over now, when Delia was in Thom’s company. The most powerful mage at Court, and the brother of the woman who had unmasked Duke Roger and killed him. She hadn’t done that by accident.

 

“ - rejoice to find that Lady Delia still graces my uncle’s court,” Duke Roger said smoothly, drawing Delia’s immediate attention. She lifted her head smoothly and smiled mildly at him, as if she weren’t afraid. “I had feared otherwise.”

 

“This is my home, your grace,” Delia said calmly.

 

“We are all glad to have Lady Delia’s company,” Cythera said unexpectedly, equally sweet.

 

“I see Lord Thom welcomes you, at least,” Duke Roger said, with an overtone that made Duke Baird’s eyes narrow, and Queen Lianne look at him as if to say _don’t be **coarse** , Roger_. Cythera’s breath caught very slightly, but her expression didn’t change.

 

Delia let the insinuation slide off her. She’d heard far worse. She opened her mouth to reply, but Thom got there first.

 

“As I told everyone when I first met Lady Delia,” Thom said, “I’m honoured to call her my sister.”

 

He laid a delicate emphasis on _sister_ , designed to remind everyone that his other sister had killed Duke Roger in an unfair fight with the lives of her liege-lords at stake.

 

“Indeed,” Duke Roger said, smile dimming very slightly. “And how is your other sister?”

 

“Making a name for herself,” Thom said casually. “Pacified the Bazhir by earning their respect. Won the victors’ wreath for the melée at King Barnesh’s tournament in Maren - turned down a place in his personal guard, though, said she could only consider serving her own liege in such a capacity. If you ask me, it would have bored her stupid. Currently travelling east with the Shang Dragon.”

 

“Good heavens,” Duke Roger said. “What a busy life. Why east, do you know?”  


“I have no idea, your Grace,” Thom said. “Maybe she wants to rescue Princess Thayet from an ivory tower, or something.”

 

A lie, Delia knew. Alanna had told Thom, as she’d told Delia, that she was in search of the Dominion Jewel. She might rescue Princess Thayet on the way, but it wasn’t in her current plans.

  
“Well, every lady needs a knight in shining armour, and Sir Alanna’s shines very brightly,” Duke Roger said blandly. “I look forward to meeting her when she returns to Court.”

 

“My son will be glad to have his most loyal knight at his left hand once more,” the Queen remarked, which was such a surprising observation that Delia concluded Her Majesty was very angry that Duke Roger had been returned to his place among the living with not merely his life but his titles - and very possibly his lands - intact.

 

Delia folded her hands in her lap and concentrated until lunch was served, at which point Thom reluctantly excused himself to go and meet Master Si-cham on his arrival from the North.

  
“Si-cham?” Duke Roger said, raising his eyebrows. “I’m surprised to hear he’s left the City of the Gods; I didn’t think he travelled any more.”

 

“Not often,” Thom said. “But the Provost needs him to be present for a mages’ misconduct investigation. I detected the more recent infraction, but I wasn’t there for the original judgement.” He shrugged. “Master Si-cham was hardly my favourite of the Mithran masters, but he headed that tribunal. So there we are.”

 

“Misconduct,” Duke Roger repeated.

 

“Indeed,” Thom said, and looked at Delia. She smiled blankly at him. It would be foolish at best for her to get up and leave with him, as he plainly thought she should.

 

Instead, she accepted Duke Baird’s escort to a luncheon table with Duchess Wilina, Lady Roxanne and the assembled younger Queenscoves. She tried not to sigh with relief. Lady Roxanne would undoubtedly catch her at it, and Duchess Wilina had the same sharp eyes.

 

“You did well to survive that,” Duke Baird observed.

 

“We will all do well to survive what’s coming,” Delia said. “Especially their majesties.”

 

***

 

Thom met Master Si-cham in the courtyard where new arrivals usually clustered, and bustled the older man into his rooms faster than was proper.

 

“Must you always do everything in a rush?” Master Si-cham said, straightening his robes as Thom chased the servants out. It was not difficult: they had heard about the frogs.

 

“This is urgent,” Thom said, and took a deep breath, hating what he had to say as an admission of failure, knowing what he had to say it to get any further forward. “We’re too late. Duke Roger has been raised from the grave. I have some leads on Blayce, and I’m more convinced than ever that it was him who did it - it was too quietly done to be anyone else - but… Duke Roger is here. I’ve just seen him.” Thom felt a sneer yank at his mouth. “He looks the picture of health.”

 

Master Si-cham’s small dark eyes narrowed, and he took a seat. “Tell me everything.”

 

Thom drew a deep breath and began.


	6. Chapter 6

Alex kept asking Delia to dance.

 

She wasn’t sure why, and wasn’t sure she liked it. She had no reason to refuse; he did not make her uncomfortable, nor did he make unacceptable small talk, nor did he draw her too close or monopolise her attention. She didn’t really expect him to misbehave. No man had dared to make himself obnoxious to her after she had become Squire Alan’s almost-betrothed. A few had overstepped their bounds in the immediate aftermath of Alanna’s unmasking and departure, Alanna’s friends had made it clear that they were watching over her, and Thom had made it even clearer that he was willing to set the unchivalrous on fire in the middle of a crowded ballroom. Raoul’s anger put people off. The prospect of toasted regalia and burnt hair put people off even more.

 

But while Delia hadn’t expected any misbehaviour from Alex, she hadn’t expected him to seek out her company, either. They had known each other since they were children: her father had contemplated a childhood betrothal before she’d shown the early promise of beauty. He had been kind, when she’d first arrived at Court. His support was one of the reasons she’d first crossed Alanna’s (and at the time, more relevantly, Jonathan’s) path. She had never even heard Alan of Trebond’s name until Alex casually mentioned the short spitfire who would take on any opponent with a sword, regardless of whether he should or not. They had drifted apart, as Alex had drifted apart from all of his friends, and Delia had spoken to him very little over the last two years. He was not one of the friends of Alanna’s who had gone out of their way to support Delia, regardless of their feelings about Alanna’s relationship with Delia.

 

And now he kept asking her to dance, and escorting her to dinner. Delia was puzzled and wary. He also spent a lot of time in the company of Princess Josiane and Roger of Conté, but he made no attempt to draw her into either the princess or the duke’s orbit.

 

Myles told her to be careful, which Delia thought was sweet of him.

 

“It must be very unexpected,” she observed, during a stately pavane, in the course of which they had managed to travel to the end of the ballroom where the musicians were not sitting, “having your knight-master return from the dead.”

 

“Unexpected is the word.” Alex swept a slow bow, and she responded with an equally elaborate curtsey. “But then, as anyone who spends much time with a mage knows, unexpected behaviour is the order of the day.”

  
  
“Surely rising from the grave is just a little out of the ordinary.”

 

“So is calling down a plague of frogs on the stewards,” Alex pointed out.

 

“I can’t help but feel,” Delia complained, “that you’re not taking me entirely seriously.”

 

Alex smiled. His teeth were very sharp.

 

Delia realised he was taking her much too seriously.

 

“And in any case,” Delia continued wearily, “there really isn’t any need for people to go on and on about the frogs. Thom has never set so much as one real live frog on anyone, but he does have a dreadful sense of humour. He’s not above inventing a plague of frogs, knowing people will run away.”

 

Alex laughed a little.

 

“You think it’s funny, but I assure you, it’s very tiresome.”  


“Your conversation could never be tiresome,” Alex said gallantly, and delivered her to Gary for the next dance.

 

The next evening, Delia played chess with Myles while Eleni Cooper watched, and told Myles that Alex hadn’t been surprised that Duke Roger was resurrected.

 

“Alex is very good at hiding his emotions,” Myles said.

 

“I’ve known him since we were children,” Delia said. “And there are not that many sons and daughters of the Hills at Court.”

 

“Hm,” Myles said, and put her king in check. “You know, you almost won this game.”

 

“I wish you would let me play cards,” Delia sighed, eyeing the board with disfavour.

 

“I’ll play cards with you,” Eleni said generously, setting aside her knitting, and promptly beat the stuffing out of Delia at alquerque. Myles sat back in the glow of the fire and smiled.

 

Torn between laughter and annoyance, Delia chose laughter. It didn’t escape her that a year ago she would have made a different choice.

 

“Tell me,” Eleni said. “Does Princess Josiane like Alex of Tirragen, or does he like her?”

 

Delia shuffled the cards, thinking, and then answered.

 

“He never seeks her out,” she said. “It’s always the other way round.” Delia pursed her lips. “If he’s involved in her machinations, it’s because they brought Roger back. He didn’t bring Roger back to serve her purposes.”

 

Delia slipped the cards into the case. “If anything,” she said slowly, thinking it out as she spoke, “I think Alex must believe she serves _Roger’s_ purposes.”

 

There was a long silence.

  
“Be careful,” Myles repeated, eventually.

 

His words felt empty. She had no choice, Delia knew, other than to carry on down the road she had chosen. And Myles knew it too.

 

***

 

Raoul had clearly taken whatever instructions Alanna had given him to take care of Delia extremely seriously. Unfortunately, he found it extremely difficult to talk to her - less because he was stupid or impolite, than because he wasn’t very good at small talk and didn’t feel comfortable attempting it. He got round this by inviting her hunting, where they got on reasonably well. Delia took this as the well-meaning compromise it was and invested in a new riding habit.

 

She no longer thought too hard, or made too many enquiries, before accepting Raoul’s invitations. He was quite harmless to her - the few topics of conversation they did manage to strike up mostly revolved around Alanna, and Delia was learning a great deal about Alanna as a page and young squire - and his hunting parties were wholly unexceptionable. There was always an almost even mix of well-born ladies and gentlemen, nobody rode off in secret, and nobody did anything out of the ordinary other than actually succeed in bringing down game. It was not a venue for flirtation, or for being anyone other than you already were.

 

Delia was down at the stables promptly with her bow and quiver slung across her back. She greeted Osola of Hannalof, a pleasant young matron with curly black hair and light hands for a horse, with a polite smile, and Raoul with a joke about the early morning and his evident hangover. Then she went to see to her horse, a mare called Sweetheart that Delia had chosen for her own Midwinter present and named for her sweet temper.

 

The sound of Princess Josiane talking to Lady Cythera took Delia by surprise. She ducked around Sweetheart to give Raoul a quizzical look, and was almost entertained to see him look more than slightly panicked.

 

“I didn’t know she was coming,” he hissed at Delia, and hurried off to ask Gary. It wasn’t really possible for a man of Raoul’s dimensions to scuttle, but if it had been he would have done.

  
Delia led Sweetheart to the mounting block, looped the mare’s reins over a nearby post, and began checking the horse’s tack to make sure that everything was in order.

 

Raoul reappeared. “Gary says he didn’t invite her either.”

 

“Which means?” Delia said, to Sweetheart’s girth strap, as she tried to heave it another notch tighter. Raoul took over.

 

“It means either it was Jon, or she invited herself. But I don’t see how she could have found out. Osola doesn’t talk to Princess Josiane and Cythera would rather cut her own throat.”

 

Going by the scrupulously polite non-answers Cythera was currently returning to Princess Josiane’s remarks, that was understating it.

 

“What a tasteful way of putting it,” Delia remarked, to the saddle. “Why is she here, do you think? She rides, but I don’t think she hunts.”  
  
Sir Raoul grimaced, and ducked his head to whisper. “Trying to sell Jon on her charms, we think. He’s not sure about her. She’s… unpleasant.”

 

“It’s taken him this long to notice? Never mind. Of course it has.” Delia climbed onto the mounting block and settled herself in the saddle.

 

“- oh,” said Princess Josiane, cutting off mid-sentence.

 

Delia heard a lot in that single syllable, and accurately deduced that Princess Josiane had not noticed she was there before. Well, two could play at that.

 

She twisted to see who it was, as if she didn’t already know, and then brought Sweetheart round so that she could bow in the saddle. “Good morning, your highness.”

 

“I wasn’t aware _she_ would be here,” Princess Josiane said to Cythera. “You ought to have told me.”

 

“I didn’t send out Sir Raoul’s invitations, your highness,” Cythera said. Delia prevented her eyebrows from shooting upwards with some difficulty - a difficulty compounded when she saw Prince Jonathan had rounded the corner and then stopped dead at Princess Josiane’s words.

 

“I can understand why _Sir Raoul_ might not think of these things,” Princess Josiane said, with layers of scorn in her voice that made Raoul stare fixedly at Sweetheart’s head and sidle round to hide behind his own horse, “and I can see why _Sir Gareth_ might not have felt able to stop him. But it’s obviously ineligible that I should join the same party as her.”

 

Delia folded her hands on her knee and asked herself if she ought to promise not to debauch Princess Josiane over the course of a morning’s hunt, but then decided not to interrupt her enemy while she was in the middle of making such a promising mistake. Prince Jonathan looked as if he was finally putting together a number of extremely small pieces and not liking the overall picture.

 

Cythera, meanwhile, was visibly struggling with the urge to tell Princess Josiane that she hadn’t been invited.

 

“Lady Delia is a member of my father’s court,” Prince Jonathan said quietly, coming forward. His eyes, where they were fixed on Princess Josiane, were wary. “And a dear friend of my former squire’s.”

 

“ _Dear friend_ -” Princess Josiane repeated, as if she couldn’t help herself. It was uncharacteristic, in a sense – the princess was sly, if she was anything – but Delia was somehow unsurprised. All kinds of people who thought themselves subtle, mannered, and courteous showed their true colours when it came to her and Alanna.

 

Prince Jonathan’s eyes hardened.

 

Delia looked up at the sky and wondered if it was perhaps coming on to snow. She wasn’t sure, in this temper, whether Prince Jonathan would have her or Princess Josiane removed from the hunt. It all depended on whether she chose to insult Alanna next or Delia.

 

“Yes,” Prince Jonathan said levelly. “Why do you ask?”

  
  
“All of Tortall knows what a _dear friend_ Alanna of Trebond is to Delia of Eldorne,” Princess Josiane said, voice full of spite, except for a faint undercurrent that suggested she felt she’d lost control of the situation, which she had; her grip on Prince Jonathan was far too weak for her to risk insulting his closest friend like this, but she had committed to it now. Her smile wavered with something that might have been panic. “The gods must have erred, for Sir Alanna to have been born the daughter and Lord Thom the son -”

 

There we go, Delia thought, and silently gave thanks that Princess Josiane’s luck had turned before she had been able to exert enough influence over Prince Jonathan to make her words dangerous, instead of merely unpleasant.

 

“I advise you not to listen to servants’ hall gossip, Princess Josiane,” Prince Jonathan said, calmly implacable. “I think you will be more comfortable in your rooms. Allow me to escort you.”

 

A heavy, uncomfortable silence hung over the courtyard long after Prince Jonathan had removed the lady from the scene. Osola of Hannalof mounted up without meeting Delia’s eye, and Gary stared at his hands and then Delia and then back at his cousin’s retreating figure repeatedly before finally handing his horse’s reins to a profoundly curious ostler and helping Cythera get onto her own horse.

 

“I’m sorry,” said Raoul.

 

“What for?” Delia said. “You didn’t say it.”

 

Raoul squirmed.

 

“You’ll make your horse uncomfortable if you carry on like that,” Delia said kindly. “If it helps, I was expecting her to say something much worse.”  
  
She was never sure if Cythera knew that Prince Jonathan was on his way back and well within earshot when Cythera said: “Away from men’s ears, she _does_ say much worse.”

 

“The things women get up to,” Gary said uneasily.

 

“Are no worse than the things men spend their time on,” Delia replied, with a sweet smile.

 

“One of our philosophy masters used to have a line about no man being any worse than the next,” Raoul volunteered. His horse was indeed fidgeting. “I suppose that applies to women, too.”

 

“You paid attention in philosophy?” Osola of Hannalof teased, as Prince Jonathan accepted his horse’s reins and mounted up. Poor Darkness clearly took his temper from his master’s humour, and jigged uneasily.

 

Prince Jonathan nodded to Raoul and the lead huntsman without speaking, and they moved off.

 

Prince Jonathan found an excuse to talk to her halfway through the hunt. Delia inclined her head respectfully to him and called him his highness.

 

Prince Jonathan winced. “We’re old friends, Lady Delia, let’s not.”

 

That’s one way of putting it, Delia thought.

 

“I’m sorry about Josiane,” Prince Jonathan said awkwardly. “It was wrong of her to talk about you that way. And about Alanna.”

 

“I don’t mind so much about myself,” Delia agreed, “far worse has been said about me, and is said about me, regularly. But I draw the line at insults to Alanna.”  


Prince Jonathan nodded stiffly.

 

The horses trotted along in uncomfortable silence. The snow was still crisp and the ground hard, but Delia felt the coming of late-winter slush could not be far off.

 

“My mother would like me to propose and set a date,” Prince Jonathan said eventually, “but…”

 

“I really think I am not the person to advise you on matrimony, Prince Jonathan,” Delia said, hugely entertained by the irony of Prince Jonathan, who had once aspired either to marry her or to get into her bed or possibly both, asking her advice on his betrothal.

 

“Well, you and Alanna were happy,” Prince Jonathan said, going a telling shade of red, “and of course it’s different, but -”

 

“Very different,” Delia said. “But I must say, if I were to advise a friend or acquaintance with regards to marriage, I would not suggest they marry someone who can’t be polite to their closest friends.”

 

“I could have thought of that myself,” Prince Jonathan said, rather pettishly. He was a far steadier man than he’d been before he went to the desert, which had prompted Delia to write to Alanna and ask what had happened. She hadn’t received a clear answer from Alanna any more than she had from Sir Myles, or from her subtle fishing among Sir Myles’ newly employed Bazhir men-at-arms; nobody had been able to provide a satisfactory explanation for the crown prince’s new maturity. But he was, she supposed, allowed the occasional return to prior form.

 

“In that case,” Delia said, “you have two people telling you it’s a bad idea. And if you spoke to your friends, I think you’d find more.”

 

He’d probably also learn a large number of things he didn’t want to know about Princess Josiane’s conduct when she wasn’t in his presence, but Delia couldn’t help that and wasn’t going to try.

 

Prince Jonathan looked at her. “Do you think so?”

 

“Unfortunately, yes.”

 

“I don’t think my mother knows she’s like this.”

 

If Delia were Princess Josiane, she would have gone to very considerable lengths to make sure her prospective mother-in-law had absolutely no idea. It astonished Delia that this had not occurred to Prince Jonathan.

 

“Probably not,” Delia said with restraint, “no.”


	7. Chapter 7

Queen Lianne died on a wet day at the end of February, less than a month after Roger’s reappearance. The bells tolled for her throughout the city, and the court went into mourning within hours. It was not as if they had not all expected it; everyone had known she couldn’t live out the year, and would be lucky to make it as far as spring. Duke Baird had never said a word - he was too much the good healer and the King’s man to say anything - but all of Court had been well aware that the emphasis of his treatment had shifted from prolonging her life to easing her symptoms.

 

Delia tied a black scarf Eleni lent her around one arm, and went straight back to the palace to change out of her blue gown. Nobody had bought mourning in the expectation of Queen Lianne’s death - it would have been a disgrace, if such an act had been generally known, and in any case she was a courageous woman and might through sheer force of will have lasted long enough to render a winter mourning wardrobe useless - but Delia had had one black and one grey gown for summer and for winter in stock for years in case her father finally did the decent thing and passed away. Her lady’s maid dressed her in the black, unembellished wool panelled with silk, and Delia gave her orders to dye some of her dresses and order black accessories, as well as buying a black band and cap for herself.

 

“Go now,” Delia said, handing over enough money to pay for the accessories, “before all the milliners are sold out. In fact - you’re devout, aren’t you?”  


Anilys nodded. Delia gave her an extra silver noble; the girl didn’t have the imagination to keep it for herself, and in any case her religious scruples would have prevented her from doing so. “Half for incense at the Black God’s temple, and half for flowers at the Goddess’s. Her Majesty venerated the Goddess. Take your time.”

 

Anilys bobbed a curtsey, looking surprised.

  
“She was - kind,” Delia said, feeling as if she somehow needed to explain herself, even though logically she didn’t. Especially not to a servant. “Her Majesty was very kind.”

 

It would have been easy, after all, to require Delia to leave Court and never return. It would have been even easier to have refused to receive her. Queen Lianne had done neither. And although Delia knew that Queen Lianne had eventually asked for Delia to be presented to her once more in order to annoy and warn Duke Roger, it had still been a kindness, and it had had a material impact on Delia’s position at Court.

 

Anilys bowed her head, wrapped an outdoor cloak around herself, and left.   

 

Delia stood very still for a moment, wondering what to do with herself, and then made her way slowly to the royal chapel. She had never been especially religious. The hillmen had had their own gods, perceptibly related to the Goddess and to Mithros but not the same, and though the worship had been stamped out by old King Jasson early in his reign the worship of the gods most of the rest of Tortall favoured had never quite taken. She’d been subjected to compulsory religion at the convent which had put her off services to a very considerable extent, and she didn’t pray all that much, even though she certainly believed in the gods - it was difficult not to.

  
It was also difficult to feel at ease in most congregations, excepting the Lower City temple of the Mother Goddess that Eleni sometimes took her to, and where Delia had begun to make the traditional donations at the turnings of the year. Nobody looked sideways at her there. Even if they knew or had guessed at her identity, a temple that specialised in feeding children whose mothers couldn’t afford to, defending girls from violent sweethearts or relations, and healing flower girls’ wounds had larger concerns than a scandalous lady of the Court. It was soothing. And sincere.

 

The royal chapel, hung with grey and white for Queen Lianne, was neither soothing nor - Delia took note of Verily haMinch, not wearing those stupid diamonds for once, crouched piously over her prayer book as if Prince Jonathan was at all likely to notice - particularly sincere. Delia walked quietly up a side aisle to the shrine for the Goddess in her incarnation of the Graveyard Hag, and nearly fell over the veiled young woman in a black cloak over a dove-grey dress kneeling beside it. The shrine was poorly lit, and the heavy columns cast deep shadows over it.

 

Delia knelt down next to her, and cast a quick look sideways as she murmured her own prayers. The young woman was Delia’s own age, fair haired, her features muffled by the unfashionably thick veil; she or someone else who had already left had laid offerings before the Graveyard Hag. It was most likely her; the Hag-Daughter presiding over the shrine with her grey hood pulled down over her face  was the only person nearby. Everyone else appeared to lack imagination, knowledge of the queen, or the genuine grief to allow themselves to mourn where they could not be seen.

 

Delia studied the offerings. She thought she recognised the flowers from the rare varieties cultivated in Queen Lianne’s private garden, where Prince Jonathan had once taken her regularly, and which she had not visited since, out of delicacy. She knew she recognised the earbobs, which were simple moonstone, set in silver. Cythera wore those regularly. Gwynnen had told Delia they were a present from Sir Gary.

 

Delia looked sideways again, and the young woman’s hands clenched in the stuff of her gown and then folded themselves neatly over the fabric. They were trembling, and the cloth was spotted with dried blood. The young woman’s shoulders were shaking hard.

 

Delia got up and went over to the Hag-Daughter. “How long has Lady Cythera been here?” she murmured.

 

“Three hours,” replied the Hag-Daughter, from beneath her hood. “Since before the bells began to ring. If you don’t take her away, Lady Delia, I will call for a Daughter to do so.”

 

Delia nodded, and went back to Cythera. She touched the other woman’s shoulder and knelt back down beside her. “Cythera.”  
  


“Please,” Cythera said, her voice thick with tears. “Leave me.”

 

“At the very least you must change out of that gown,” Delia said gently. “Did you know there’s blood on it?”

 

Cythera let out a sob that threatened to shatter the silence of the chapel, but allowed Delia to help her up and half-carry her out of the chapel. Cythera was tall and solid enough to make it difficult, but after the first few minutes she regained her strength and Delia no longer had to stagger through the palace.

 

Delia steered Cythera back to her rooms, where Cythera’s maid became hysterical in the most unhelpful manner; Delia told her to stop being so silly, take Cythera’s gown down to the laundresses at once, and fetch water for a bath, which caused her to twitter while doing things instead of simply twitter. Delia undid Cythera’s gown herself and wrapped the other woman up in a dressing gown, and installed her before the fire with a herbal tea labelled in Duke Baird’s fine handwriting. She hoped, vaguely, that it would help the other woman sleep. But Cythera showed no signs of dozing off; she simply shivered, despite the fire and the dressing gown and the blanket Delia piled on top of her, and stared at her hands.

 

Delia went through Cythera’s embroidery table until she found a pack of cards, and began to play an uncharacteristically nervous and distractible game of solitaire.

 

After a little while the maid returned with cans of water brought by a pair of other maids, and the three of them filled a bath in the other room and helped Cythera into it. Delia stayed exactly where she was, under the maids’ eyes, apparently completely absorbed in solitaire; it would do Cythera’s reputation no good if she were too solicitous at this point.

 

“Has Lady Cythera given orders for mourning clothes?” Delia asked suddenly, realising that Cythera likely wasn’t in a state of mind to make the necessary arrangements - unless, of course, she’d already done it. Cythera was an organised sort of woman and knew the queen’s health better than anyone save Duke Baird. Certainly better than the king did. Delia knew perfectly well the queen had hidden the severity of her illness as well as she could for as long as she could, to spare her beloved husband pain.

 

The maids looked at each other, and then the lady’s maid - Tilaine, that was the name: Cythera had said it when she’d ordered the woman out of the bath chamber - cleared her throat. “Lady Cythera gave me the instructions a week ago, when she began to think…” She fell silent. “I followed them as soon as I heard the bells begin to ring.”

 

“She didn’t tell you about Queen Lianne herself?” Delia prompted.

 

“None of us has spoken to my lady today. Lady Cythera rose before dawn to tend the queen. She must have come in to fetch the cloak and veil when I was carrying out her commissions.”

 

Delia nodded. “So to the best of your knowledge she has eaten nothing today?”

 

Tilaine nodded.

 

“Send down to the kitchens for something she likes to eat,” Delia said. “Preferably something simple. No wine, only water. You will know her tastes better than I do. The bereaved tend to forget about dinner.”

 

Tilaine bobbed her agreement, and instructed one of the other maids in a low whisper. Delia went back to solitaire. It was not absorbing enough; she wished fruitlessly for a chessboard. She stacked her cards, and went through Cythera’s bookshelves. The lady appeared to have a taste for fiction that was gruesome, far-fetched or both; Delia bypassed all of this and went for the largest and most well-thumbed volume, a leather-bound book of fairytales.

 

She was reading this when Cythera finally reappeared, dressed in embroidered black wool with a high neck that would have made Delia look matronly. Cythera, however, looked like a nymph, if there was such a thing as a miserable nymph. Tilaine had done her hair in a simple chignon covered with fine black lace that spilled down her back, pinned with a comb at the top.

 

“Fairytales?” Cythera said.

 

“I like them,” Delia said. “They have predictable happy endings.”

 

The food arrived; choice cuts of baked chicken, soft, sweet roast winter greens, and fresh little white rolls with nuts in. There was enough for two, but Cythera ate very sparingly. Still, she ate, despite swearing she couldn’t touch a morsel. Tilaine had clearly chosen well.

 

“How did you know to do all this?” Cythera said, after about half an hour of largely silent eating.

 

“I was nine when my mother died,” Delia said. “I haven’t forgotten.”

 

Cythera winced.

 

“It was a long time ago,” Delia said. She wasn’t hungry; she watched Cythera push her food around her plate. “You should rest.”

 

Cythera shook her head. “I have to go through her Majesty’s papers.” She looked at Tilaine. “Thank you, Tilaine, that will be all.”

 

The maid bobbed a curtsey and left.

 

“Do you have to do it now?” Delia asked.

 

“Yes,” Cythera said. Her mouth twisted. “I should not like to put Princess Josiane to the trouble. She has already offered to help.”

 

Delia thought about the combination of Princess Josiane and her Majesty’s private papers, and decided that she understood Cythera’s point of view. “It will take you days to do alone, and if it’s not done soon the princess will elbow her way in. Let me help you.”

 

“So you can tell Sir Myles everything?” Cythera said softly, looking as if she could cheerfully put her fork through the back of Delia’s hand and pin it to the table.

 

“Sir Myles is the king’s confidential agent,” Delia said, equally softly. “If he wanted access to Queen Lianne’s papers he wouldn’t need me to get it.”

 

Cythera looked murderous.

 

“Would you rather it was me or Princess Josiane?” Delia said. “I’ve done many things and most of them weren’t all that virtuous. But I’ve never paid to raise a traitor from the dead.”

 

Cythera went white, and for a moment there was total silence.

 

“Is that true?” Cythera said.

 

 _Probably_ , Delia thought. “Yes,” she said out loud.

 

“Fine,” Cythera said. “On one condition.”

 

“What?”

 

Cythera leaned over the table, her face raw with grief and anger. “Roger’s return drove my queen into her grave. _Bring her justice_.”

 

“Deal,” Delia said.

 

They spent eight hours in the queen’s private study, sorting papers, burning some, keeping others for payment or action, stacking a few in carved wooden boxes for Duke Gareth, or King Roald, or Prince Jonathan. Delia took mental notes on everything, feeling that physical notes would probably be pushing Cythera’s patience too far.

 

Queen Lianne had not wanted to hate or fear Roger, but she had done. She had not wanted to be angry at her pain, but she had been. Her opinion of Alanna had been high until her unmasking, and had then been extremely low, but in recent days she had wished that her son had that unshakable loyalty and power to call on. She didn’t trust Delia, which was wise.

 

There were also a number of interesting remarks about Princess Josiane. Delia made a point of committing those to memory.

 

They did not finish until the bells tolled midnight. Cythera straightened up and staggered a little.

 

“We’ve done enough,” she said. “That’s everything important.”

 

Delia allowed herself to be shown out of the room and watched as Cythera locked the door and then mage-locked it behind them.

 

When she turned back to Delia she looked grey with exhaustion.

 

“You’re tired,” Delia said, realising Cythera had now been awake for a full day and night, or nearly so. “You need rest.”

 

Cythera did not argue with her.

 

A distinctive voice came from around the corner just ahead as they left the queen’s rooms and circumvented an open courtyard with a frozen fountain; Delia sighed imperceptibly at the sound of it, and felt Cythera tense so markedly that Cythera must have recognised it too. The way Cythera’s hand closed so tightly on Delia’s arm that her nails would leave a mark was also a clue.

 

“Oh _no_ ,” Cythera hissed, “I don’t want to talk to her -”

 

She pulled Delia suddenly behind a carved wooden screen, into the shadows of the service corridor behind it.

 

Princess Josiane, glimpsed through the carvings, was wearing her hair in a crown of braids. A black veil as light as gauze was pinned from the bottom edge of the coronet, using broad-headed jewelled pins that sparkled and caught the light of the lamps even though they weren’t faceted.

 

Cythera caught her breath.

 

“I take it her highness did not spend much time at her godsmother’s side,” Delia murmured. “For you to be this annoyed.”

 

Cythera bit her lip briefly.

 

“No,” Cythera said at last.

 

There was a strangled pause, and then the other woman hissed: “And she’s wearing a _crown_!”

 

“Tasteless,” Delia agreed. “Let’s hope Prince Jonathan sees it. He’ll put her on the next boat home after the funeral.”

 

“Your humour is disgusting,” Cythera said, and paused. “Perhaps I should make a point of telling Gary.”

 

“I leave it up to your judgement,” Delia said, smiling slightly, and glanced at Cythera. “Will you be all right by yourself?”

 

“Isabela will spend the night with me,” Cythera said. “I won’t be alone.”

 

“Good.” Delia walked back to Cythera’s rooms with her, and left her with Tilaine and Isabela. Then she returned to her own rooms, and found Anilys sitting up waiting for her.

 

While Delia took out her writing things, she listened to Anilys’ thorough accounting of her actions, and authorised a draft on the bank for the expenses that had not immediately been met.  She found a note on top of the portable writing desk, and frowned at Thom’s messy handwriting.

 

“Lord Thom sent that round earlier,” Anilys said, correctly interpreting her frown. “I haven’t touched the nasty thing, my lady.”

 

“Anilys, it’s a note. What do you think it’s going to do, bite you?”

 

“It might do anything, my lady.”

 

“I’ve told you a hundred times,” Delia said wearily. “The frogs, rainmaking and puffs of smoke are all coincidences, rumours, or badly run experiments. There’s nothing mystic about them. He isn’t going to turn you into a toad, he just has a profoundly inappropriate sense of humour.”

 

“But he could if he liked to, my lady, and he’s that strange you never know whether he will or not.”

 

Delia conceded the point, somewhat regretfully. There was no teaching Thom not to be outrageous. “My return note needn’t go round until tomorrow, and you can have a runner take it if it worries you that much. You can go to bed now.”

 

Anilys bobbed a curtsey and went.

 

Thom’s note was short. It said only that he’d heard the news and wanted to know both whether she was all right and whether she intended to keep her appointment to play chess with Sir Myles, because if so he’d escort her down into the city.

 

It was news to Delia that she had an appointment to play chess with Sir Myles. At least it was a reasonably subtle way of asking whether she had information that Myles needed to know.

 

She wrote back that she’d unfortunately missed her appointment, but hoped Sir Myles would forgive her under the circumstances. She thanked Thom for his courtesy, and asked him to escort her to the temple of the Goddess tomorrow, so she could pay her respects.

 

Then she pulled a fresh sheet of paper towards her, dipped the pen’s nib in the ink and wrote, uncertainly:

 

_Dear Alanna, I don’t know where you are, but whenever you get this - Queen Lianne is dead. We need you very much. Please come home._

 

The next day Thom escorted her, rather grumpily, to the temple of the Goddess, and Anilys took a second note to House Olau, sent to Myles under the cover of Eleni’s name. It wasn’t signed, because it didn’t need to be. Anilys thought it was a request for a herbal prescription, which it wasn’t.

 

_Queen Lianne trusted Princess Josiane, but she believed her life was the price for Duke Roger’s resurrection._

 

Eleni sent one back, attached to a tisane for sweet sleep and carefully sealed. If Delia had to guess, it was only partly from Myles.

 

_Where is the Malven boy getting his money from?_

 

“Good question,” Delia muttered, and got back to work.


	8. Chapter 8

Alex escorted Delia to the funeral. Master Si-cham had dragged Thom into the section for the Mithran masters, not because he felt Thom couldn’t be trusted at a solemn occasion, but because, as the person responsible for Master Si-cham’s presence in Corus, Thom was supposed to provide him all due assistance. Including, as Thom grumbled, acting like a sentient walking stick, or a pet.

 

None of his grumbling disguised the fact that Thom was proud of the way Master Si-cham spoke of him now: not as a precocious troublemaker, but as a peer. Delia kept this to herself, along with the important fact that she had asked Master Si-cham to demand Thom’s assistance to get to and from the funeral.

 

Gary was standing the traditional guard over the coffin with his father, King Roald, and Prince Jonathan. Raoul was escorting Cythera, at Gary’s request. Delia could have asked any of Alanna’s friends for their help, or she could have attended with Myles, but she had known Alex from her childhood. It made sense for her to call on him.

 

He agreed. The fact that he agreed so easily made her palms sweat. It was only gentlemanly, but…

 

Alex was the perfect chivalrous knight all the way to the funeral. He matched his pace to Delia’s; he maintained a solemn silence rather than requiring her to talk. He behaved impeccably during the service, and caught her prayer book when she dropped it before it could hit the floor. Her grateful smile was perfectly genuine.

 

Afterwards, as they were returning to the palace, Delia said: “It reminded me of the convent.”

 

“Really?” Alex looked down at her. “We didn’t have religious services as pages. Not obligatory ones.”  
  
“Try growing up in a convent of the Mother Goddess,” Delia recommended. “They’re inescapable.”  
  
“I’ll pass, thanks,” Alex said gravely.

 

Delia snorted. “Still. It was a very moving service. Even at fifteen, I wouldn’t have fidgeted my way through that.”

 

“You mean to tell me you weren’t a paragon of maidenly piety?” Alex said, extremely dryly.

  
She pinched his arm. “Oh, shush. No, I wasn’t. I used to play word games with three of the other girls - Lila of Seabeth and Seajen, Berenjera haMinch - no, not that haMinch, a cousin of hers in the cadet line - and Eiralys.”

 

“Eiralys of Malven?”  


“I don’t know any others,” Delia said equably. “Unless you’re counting Vivenne of Cavall’s baby.”  


“I can’t tell babies apart, let alone remember their names.” Alex shook his head. “Eiralys of Malven never came to Court, though.”

 

“I assume she went home after the nastiness with her brother.” Delia shrugged. “But I haven’t been home in nearly ten years. You know what Father’s like.”

 

“The last time I went back to Tirragen my father had made the critical error of inviting him for dinner,” Alex said. “I know exactly what your father’s like. Incidentally, if you want to speed up the succession, I recommend you allow him to challenge Alanna to the duel he wants. She’ll take him apart.”

 

“Yes, but then she’ll feel awful about it, and I can’t be responsible for Alanna’s fits of guilt.” Delia resettled her light veil over her face. She technically didn’t have to wear one, but Cythera had unintentionally caused a craze for them, and under the circumstances Delia wasn’t going to complain about her face being harder to see. “Why waste my time when he’ll drink himself into the grave sooner rather than later?”

 

“Very true.”

 

They walked on for a few paces longer.

 

“Did you see Eiralys when you went home? I’m curious now.”

 

“I didn’t know you were friends,” Alex said.

 

“We’re not,” Delia said, and added perfectly truthfully: “I haven’t thought of her in years, if I’m honest with you.”

 

Alex snorted, which was all this observation deserved. “No. She wasn’t at Malven. She became a temple warrior for the Goddess. I’m surprised to hear that she used to play up in the back of the temple as a girl.”

 

“She found the First Daughter’s sermons boring,” Delia said. “We all did. You’d have to be a true martyr for the gods to pay attention, let alone enjoy them. The Maiden-Daughter used to fall asleep and snore, but she was Duke Baird’s oldest sister and too wealthy for the First Daughter to do anything meaningful about it.”

 

“I had no idea the convent was so political,” Alex said, as they arrived at the funeral feast.

 

Delia judged it wise to change the subject.

 

Later, she made enquiries, and then wrote two letters to a convent just outside Port Legann. One of these was sent in the ordinary way, and then scooped up by George’s loyalists in the Port before it could reach its destination. The other was sent under cover of a letter from Eleni, and used the resources of the Goddess’ temple in the Lower City to reach the convent. The two were identical, except that the second letter contained one more sheet of paper with a few additional lines on it.

 

_Eiralys, I have reason to believe your brother Ralon is in Corus and up to his old tricks. We can’t allow history to repeat itself. What do you know of your brother’s recent movements, if anything? Any information will help me root him out and send him away before he damages the name of the Hills even further._

 

_Please reply by return post, in a letter addressed to Eleni Cooper at the Lower City West temple in Corus. Don’t mention my name. After Queen Lianne’s death and the unnatural raising of Duke Roger, the Provost’s eyes are fixed very closely on myself, on Alex of Tirragen, on all the usual suspects. You know how things are._

 

“Interfered with,” George said, when Delia arrived at House Olau to collect her post. “You were right, Delia. It was clean work, but not that clean. The lads spotted it easily and we’re workin’ on tracin’ it to this Alex - not that I think it’ll be that hard.”

 

“They burned the duplicate letter, I hope,” Delia said.

  
George bowed to her. “Of course.” He handed her her letter. “Mother’s out with a patient. I think you’ll find this interestin’.”

 

“You’ve already read it,” Delia said, with resignation, scanning Eiralys’ letter herself. George, confound him, merely grinned.

  
_Old friend_ , it read, _I don’t know why you chose to write to me after all these years but thank you for warning me about Ralon. If he carries on that dreadful path he started on ten years ago my family will not survive him._

 

_I can’t help you about his movements. After his scar healed, our father dragged him along the coast road to Port Legann and put him on a boat to Jerykun Island in the Copper Isles without enough money for a return passage. My Sisters in the temples there, those who are not of Copper Islander stock, return to Port Legann with tales of great cruelty. So perhaps he’s found his place._

 

_I pray to the Goddess nightly that he has not returned. Are you sure you aren’t mistaken?_

 

_You needn’t answer me, I remember well that you’re almost never mistaken._

 

_If you ever come to Port Legann, you will always have a friend in -_

 

_Eiralys, Spear-Daughter of the Mother of the Seas, Port Legann._

 

“Well, well, well,” Delia said. “The Copper Isles. Again.”

 

“It’s almost as if someone planned this,” George said. “I’m very nearly flattered they decided my throne was important enough to shake, along of His Majesty’s.”

 

“Ralon was a very domineering little boy,” Delia said. “If I had to guess, your Court and functional immunity from the Dogs is his prize. He’d control all the theft in the city, and he’d make it official - wind it in with the law.”

 

George’s mouth twisted grimly. “I taught Alanna how to fight so’s she could make him eat dust,” he said. “Suppose I’d better finish the job before she gets back and is all disappointed. I hate disappointin’ the lass.”  
  
“You and I, George Cooper,” Delia said, “have more in common than I had previously supposed.”

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE for violence, Blayce, canon Copper Islander slavery, and King Roald's canon death.

“Here,” Thom said, not with confidence but with certainty. “This is it.”

 

“I was not under the impression you experienced visions,” Master Si-cham said, looking thoughtfully at the shabby townhouse they were observing from the tavern opposite. He was dressed in plain clothes rather than Mithran robes for this expedition, though his medallion of office lay beneath an undyed linen shirt and a warrant from the High Tribunal of the City of the Gods was tucked into a hidden pocket in his wide brown belt.

 

“I don’t,” Thom said briefly. “I just know.”

 

“It’s not that many houses in Corus are paid for by the Copper Isles,” George observed, returning from having stabled their horses and taking up a deceptively deferential position behind Master Si-cham’s chair. “An’ I think I should be congratulated for finding this one. The trail was well-hidden.”  
  
“So you said,” Master Si-cham said thoughtfully.

  
“It’s well-guarded,” George warned. “Are you sure you want to go in the front door?”

 

“It’s only polite,” Thom said.

 

George gave him an unimpressed look.

 

“We have a legitimate reason for being here,” Master Si-cham said. “Younger needs the supplies we have brought for his spells, and he’s expecting a delivery, so he will let us in. The Provost’s men are waiting to arrest anyone who flees, and the mages who work for the Dogs know their business.” He straightened his old-fashioned doublet. “It is not as if the likes of Inar Hadensra are on the premises. You are safe with us.”

 

“I thought we were hoping to do this subtly,” George said.

  
“I thought you knew Thom,” Master Si-cham replied. He shook his head. “If Blayce comes quietly, we’ll be subtle. If not, we won’t have the option. We may need to fight our way out, but -” his eyes rolled briefly back in his head - “I don’t sense any other mages in the building.”  
  
“They’re hidden from my Sight,” George said crossly.

 

“Where’s your sense of fun?” Thom said sarcastically. His palms were sweating.

 

George gave him a narrow look.

 

“Time to start, I think,” Master Si-cham said, and got up and made straight for the front door before anyone could stop him. Thom followed afterwards, before he could hesitate, and George swore and followed them both. He had a knapsack over his shoulder, which very genuinely did contain various pieces of sorcerors’ kit, all of them cheap and none of them explosive. Thom and Eleni Cooper had raided their storecupboards.

 

Master Si-cham knocked in the pattern that they had heard others knock in, and the door was opened by a part-raka girl, her dress plain and her eyes lowered.

 

“Visitors for the gentleman,” said Master Si-cham.

 

“We’re not expecting visitors, sirs,” she said, in a soft, lyrical accent.

 

“Maybe he forgot to mention us,” Thom said casually. His hat pulled low over his forehead hid his distinctive hair, but still, standing directly in the doorway, the skin between his shoulderblades itched with discomfort.

 

The girl hesitated.

 

George was looking down at her hands, which had the marks of shackles on when the cuffs rode up slightly. “You know,” he said casually, “there are no slaves in Tortall.”

 

The girl’s eyes flickered up to his, quick and bright. Her eyes were pale, startlingly blue against her brown skin, and her sharp intake of breath showed teeth that had been badly cared for.

 

“The Dogs have this house surrounded,” George continued. “You only have to make it up the street. You’re free as soon as you’re in their hands. Ask to speak to Sir Myles of Olau - or if you can’t talk to a noble, find your way to the Dancing Dove, and tell Rispah I sent you.”

 

The girl’s hand started to her throat, where a spelled collar sat. It would kill her if she left.

 

“Allow me, miss,” Thom said, and reached out with one careful finger.

 

She hesitated, met his eyes, and then stepped forward into his touch, just before the threshold of the door. The collar dissolved easily at a touch of purple fire, and the girl’s head lifted like she hadn’t taken a full breath since it was put in place.

 

“The wizard’s room is up the stairs, first on the left,” she said, soft and rapid. “He’s in there. I took him wine just now.”

 

“Thank you,” Master Si-cham said. “You’ve been very brave.”

 

The girl’s eyes clouded. “I know,” she said, and stepped hesitantly out of the house. When she didn’t choke and die, she took another step, and then another.

 

They took her place in the house, and closed the door behind them.

 

A sergeant came out into the hall. “Sary, w-” he began, but before his eyes could widen or he could draw his sword, Si-cham waved a hand and he crumpled soundlessly to the floor. The door he had opened swung shut very quietly behind him, and George dragged a heavy table in front of it while Thom melted the lock. There were wards at the end of the entrance hall, but Thom rested his hands against them and found that they dissolved easily enough. He was sweating when he had finished, but it took only seconds, and instead of feeling tired he felt his Gift running hot throughout his body. Nobody seemed to have noticed the wards fall: Blayce certainly should have if they were his, but perhaps they were to keep him in as well as keep others out. Perhaps there was a mage somewhere in the Copper Isles’ embassy, leaping to their feet and ordering men to this well-kept house far from the embassy building.

 

They went up the stairs, with their heavily cleaned once-good carpet, and turned left. The door to the workroom was closed.

 

George and Thom looked at each other. George drew a second knife, and Thom muttered a spell, casting a ball of purple fire into his right hand.

 

Master Si-cham knocked.

  
“Who’s there?” yelled a thin, peevish voice. “Sary, I told you, I don’t want to be disturbed. Unless it’s that man from the embassy -”

 

Master Si-cham pushed the door open. “I am afraid,” he said, “I am not the man from the embassy.”

 

“You!” Blayce cried, jumping to his feet. “ _Guards_!”

 

George shut the door behind them and barred it. The door below would not necessarily hold long.

  
“Don’t waste our time,” Thom recommended.

 

“Blayce Younger,” Master Si-cham said formally, drawing the warrant from his belt. “I, Master Si-cham, Grand Master of the Order of Mithros in His sanctuary in the City of the Gods, arrest you for the crime of necromancy, a crime which you have committed once before, and for which the penalty of death was suspended -”

 

“No!” Blayce screamed. “No! You will not interfere - my work is too important - you filthy old man and your pawns, no, I won’t have it, no!”

 

“Blayce,” Master Si-cham said. “This can be painful. But it need not be.”

 

Blayce howled and attacked them.

 

Afterwards Thom never remembered exactly how most of it happened. He had fought the odd mages’ duel, and it had always been an easy win. The attacks were never visceral. A wall of fire might be thrown at you, the earth rise before you, but your fellow mage didn’t rip at your face with their nails, bawling for your blood, and your fellow mage wasn’t a necromancer who could enslave your spirit, living or dead.

  
Thom later remembered, after some thought and a lot of nightmares, that after the first few quick exchanges of defensive and offensive spells, Blayce had panicked and thrown both a chair and a shockwave of energy at George. Only the latter had connected, but George had been thrown heavily into a glass-fronted cabinet, where he’d hit his head on the wood and smashed a window, and the shockwave had also made Master Si-cham falter in the middle of a cantrip, causing it to wither into nothing. Thom’s purple fire burned Blayce’s finicky, merchant-neat clothing, but he was too battle-mad to care, and before Thom could block more effectively or cast a spell that would throw Blayce off him Blayce’s nails were tearing into the skin of his cheek, blood running freely down Thom’s face and over Blayce’s hand, and Thom could hear words from a nightmare, a spell he recognised from the oldest and most dangerous of the grimoires in the library of the City of the Gods, one that would trap him within his own body and turn all his Gift and all his power on his friends, his sister -

 

Terrified, Thom reached out and squeezed Blayce’s heart, just once.

 

The words cut off, and Blayce fell. He wasn’t dead yet, but Thom could feel his heart spasming, and though Thom had instinctively known how to do the damage it was now cascading and he couldn’t stop it. He had never trained as a healer.

 

Thom dropped to his knees beside Blayce as George rose, groaning and swearing, and Master Si-cham hurried over. “Who brought you here?” Thom snapped. “Who’s paying you? Blayce, _why did you do it_?”

 

Blayce was gasping like a fish, his breath rasping seal-like as his chest heaved and his eyes stared at the ceiling, and Thom glanced wildly around until he caught Si-cham’s eye.

  
“Master, can’t you - I’m no healer - please -”

 

“There is nothing I can do,” Si-cham said. “Not now. And it is faster than the stake and fire.”

 

Thom grabbed Blayce’s shirt front and shook him. The necromancer’s head bounced limply. “Tell me,” he shouted. “Tell me! _Why did you raise Duke Roger_?”

 

George looked at the man in the strange sideways way that meant he was using his Sight, and shook his head. “He’s gone,” he said. “Thom, let it go. He’s gone.”

 

“No!” Thom yelled. “We didn’t _get_ anything! We don’t _know_ anything!”

 

“I know,” Si-cham said. “But you could not have done anything else.”  
  
“It’s my fault!”

 

“If he had taken your spirit -”

 

The guards finally burst through the door, shouting.

 

“ _Oh go away_ ,” Thom snarled, and spoke a Word of Power that froze them all in ice.

 

“Is that permanent?” George asked Si-cham, from where he was going through Blayce’s desk.

 

“No,” Si-cham said. “I’ll fix it on the way out.”

 

“We didn’t get anything we came to get,” Thom moaned. “We’ve failed. I’ve failed Alanna. I promised Delia -”

 

“We came to get a way to kill Duke Roger,” George said coolly, replacing the mages’ kit in his knapsack with sheaves of Blayce’s notes. “We can still find somethin’ in his work. He seems to have written everythin’ down, which is stupid of him, but if it leads us to Roger’s weaknesses and Princess Josiane’s money I won’t be complainin’.” He laid a hand on Thom’s shoulder. “Breathe.”  
  
“I’m not a child!”

 

“I know.” George squeezed hard. “Breathe.”

 

Thom took a breath, held it, and let it out, and then repeated the trick until his chest rose and fell normally once more.

 

“You want to get that blood off your face,” George said critically. “You look a fright.”

 

Thom wiped at the drying trails of blood with a shaking hand.

 

“I want my sister,” he said, and got up and left.

 

It was a solemn group that arrived back at the palace. George, in his role as Master Si-cham’s manservant, took the horses to the mews; Master Si-cham slipped into his rooms by a back entrance to change his clothing. Thom headed to Myles’ office, to report a failure.

 

He found Delia, as he expected, but she was not playing chess with Myles, who was talking quietly but intensely to Duke Gareth of Naxen. She was sewing - working on a pair of gauntlets, Thom realised as he peered at them closely. He had seen the strips of fabric that formed the cuffs - she had been working them for months - but now she was stitching them to the heavy gloves, which she must have had made. They were practical, designed for winter wear: soft dark brown leather lined with red silk, and the embroidered cuffs were a deceptively simple abstract design in violet and gold.

 

Her face was half-hidden, her eyelids lowered, but Thom could see that she was tense and scared.

 

“Lord Thom,” Duke Gareth said sharply. “You were looking for Sir Myles?”

 

Thom tore his eyes from Delia. “Yes,” he said. Normally he would respond to Duke Gareth’s words with something equally edged; but there was something very wrong here.

  
“I was expecting him,” Sir Myles said calmly. “Thom, why is there blood on your face?”

 

Thom shrugged.

 

“This isn’t a good time,” Duke Gareth snapped.

 

Thom ignored him, and spoke directly to Myles. “We found the necromancer who raised Duke Roger.”

 

Delia did not stop sewing. Duke Gareth’s jaw hung open, just slightly.

 

“He was living in a townhouse on the edge of the Upper City,” Thom said. “The rent was paid by the Copper Isles embassy, through two intermediaries, and the servants were Copper Islanders.” Thom took a deep breath. “Master Si-cham laid the charges against him, and ordered him to lay aside his weapons and accept the judgement of the High Tribunal.”

 

Delia had laid down her sewing and was watching him, her emerald eyes perfectly steady.

 

“He attacked us. There are ways, for a necromancer, to enslave the spirits of the living as well as the dead.” Thom swallowed. “He was halfway through the spell when I killed him. I tried to make him name the person who hired him first, but I - couldn’t. There was a slave girl at the door who we freed, but the Provost spoke to her before we even reached Blayce. She knows nothing except that she was brought in by a minor embassy official, as part of his household.”

 

“I would be shocked if there was any way to connect him to Princess Josiane,” Myles commented. “As we’ve had cause to learn, she is not that sloppy.”

 

Thom rubbed the fingers of his right hand over his forehead. They still felt the spell that had killed Blayce Younger. “I can tell you one useful thing. Blayce wasn’t carrying Roger’s Gift, and he should have been. Roger hasn’t got his Gift attached to him – I tested that the moment I saw him, and I’ve done it repeatedly since. There’s nothing there. But I’ll bet anything that Roger’s lying when he says he left it in the grave, which means it’s stored somewhere. Maybe in opals or something. I don’t know. I couldn’t make Blayce tell me that either.”

 

“A pity,” Myles said gently. “But you did what you could.”

 

Thom nodded jerkily. “Si-cham’s coming - to tell you what he saw. To give you an official statement.”

 

“Have you ever killed anyone before?” Duke Gareth said, staring at him with a forensic eye.

 

Thom shook his head.

 

“Sit down,” Duke Gareth said gruffly, pushing a chair towards him. “Have a glass of brandy. You’re not the first to turn a bit jelly-legged after a kill. I did it myself, at your age. I expect even your sister got sickly over her first death.”

 

Thom accepted the glass and sipped at it slowly. It made his head swim, a little, but the fire of it roused him. “What happened here? I wasn’t expecting you, Your Grace.”

 

Duke Gareth and Myles looked at each other, the lean old hawk and the deceptively soft spy, but neither of them said anything. It was Delia’s voice that broke the silence: clear and high and unusually harsh.

 

“Thom,” she said, “King Roald has killed himself.”

 

***

 

Delia was down at the archery butts, again, practising with a crossbow, when Raoul came to find her. He made very awkward small talk for a few minutes, which Delia responded to as kindly as possible in order not to alarm him, and then said hesitantly that Pri- that the new king had given him a task.

 

Delia made an encouraging noise.

 

“I’m to fetch Alanna,” Raoul said. “She’s in Sarain somewhere, and she can’t have got that far without attracting attention, she’s - you know what she’s like.”  


“If it’s not the purple eyes, it’s the gold mail, talking cat, or deeds of chivalry,” Delia agreed, heart suddenly beating too fast. “I haven’t decided if it’s true or not that she’s got the Dominion Jewel, but I expect if you’re going to find her, then we’ll know soon enough.”

 

Raoul grinned unexpectedly. “I don’t know why it took me so long to realise you’re funny,” he commented.

 

Delia, who knew exactly why it had taken him so long, merely smiled.

 

“Anyway,” Raoul said, going abruptly shy again, “I thought - if there’s anything you’d like to send - a letter, or - I’m leaving for Port Caynn at dawn tomorrow, so just have it sent round, and… and I’ll take it to her.”

 

Delia found herself suddenly a little bit breathless. She had had no letters from Alanna for months, and even Myles’ informants had stopped reporting back on rumours of her at the end of the previous year. The only news Delia had had for half a year had come from a street singer she’d overheard by chance in the market, playing a ballad off a Tyran boat about the Lioness and the Dragon in Sarain. It was doubtless wildly exaggerated, and the song itself was awful, but Delia had paid an entire copper noble to hear the ballad sung through twice and the lyrics kept echoing in her ears at odd moments.

 

The idea of sending Alanna an entire letter, one she could be confident Alanna would receive –

 

“Delia?”

 

“Thank you,” Delia said, catching her breath and feeling her voice shake too much with excess sincerity. “I will. I appreciate the thought, Sir Raoul.”


	10. Chapter 10

The breakthrough came, in the end, from sweet gossipping Gwynnen, and her friendship with Princess Josiane.

 

It was no secret that the ladies of the Court had been angling for a place among Princess Josiane’s future Tortallan ladies-in-waiting, back when it had seemed certain that she would be queen. Now that King Jonathan had lost his taste for her company, most of those fair-weather friends had deserted Princess Josiane, excepting a few who were either foolish enough or sufficiently badly informed to believe that King Jonathan would change his mind and choose the match his mother had selected out of sentiment.

 

Delia knew better, and had told Myles so. King Jonathan was practical, at his core, but he wouldn’t choose a wife he couldn’t like - and any wife he liked would have to be ready to like the friends he needed to shore up his reign. To Delia’s thinking, marriage wasn’t on the cards yet. No princess could protect King Jonathan’s throne from Duke Roger as effectively as his own loyal friends could, and no king or emperor in their right mind would send a daughter or a sister to a Court which harboured a revenant - king’s cousin or no king’s cousin. Myles told Delia that Princess Josiane had been receiving increasingly stern hints from her sister Princess Nuritin that Tortall was no place for a delicately reared luarin female. Unfortunately, the princess showed no signs of heeding her sister’s advice, and King Oron seemed to take very little interest in her doings. The gods alone knew why.

 

Delia didn’t interest herself in speculation that wasn’t immediately relevant, only in concrete facts and more nebulous webs of power and alliance, such as the shifts around the Court as factions built up around those who might be expected to wield influence over King Jonathan, including those who might be expected to marry him. Delia wasn’t as central as she had been once, as the pretty green-eyed girl on Prince Jonathan’s arm, or even the maiden who’d lost her heart to Squire Alan. But in some ways her scandal and retreat from the centre of Court had opened up new paths; she found it easier to get the information Myles had begun to ask of her now that she wasn’t considered a potential power. No-one suspected _her_ of having the potential to influence the king - unlike Cythera (the sentimental choice given her close relationship with the royal family, and unlikely, given Cythera’s fondness for Gary), the older haMinch daughter (Delia gave that one no odds at all), a Maren princess Delia knew frustratingly little of, and Princess Josiane herself.

 

Not many people would give Princess Josiane good odds. King Jonathan remained polite and friendly, but his romantic interest had clearly evaporated when it had become impossible to ignore her disgust at his most trusted friends. Delia had already known that Princess Josiane thought Sir Gary weak, Sir Raoul an oaf, and Alanna an unnatural whore, but all of this had come as a slow-dawning shock to King Jonathan. One he wasn’t likely to forget.

 

Still, he also wasn’t likely to ban her from the Court, and Princess Josiane offered opportunities in and of herself to an ambitious noble. She had royal favour back in the Copper Isles, and substantial estates of her own. There were trade routes she might influence. Good marriages with luarin nobles she might be able to broker. It wasn’t a life or a source of power Delia would choose - she felt strongly that anything positive you got from Princess Josiane would be paid for, with interest - but she understood why some were keeping their options open.

 

Including Gwynnen.

 

The other woman had been one of those hopefuls for a lady-in-waiting’s role, and she was both too gentle and too keenly aware of Princess Josiane’s personal capital to leave her side completely. Delia admired that sort of loyalty. She also found it deeply useful, particularly given Gwynnen’s storytelling habits.

 

They were on their way back from a damp spring ride when Delia’s patient cultivation of Gwynnen’s confidence suddenly bore fruit, via a reference to the earbobs Delia was wearing: tiny clusters of peridots and gold that Alanna had bought her, and which Gwynnen thought were just charming. Gwynnen passed from there to a forensic examination of all the more interesting jewels to be found at Court, especially Cythera’s blue tourmalines and the hideously ostentatious diamonds worn by Verily haMinch, incidentally providing Delia with several small but useful pieces of information. (Gwynnen might be suggestible, but she wasn’t stupid, and she had a keen eye for incriminating gifts and jewels replaced with paste.) And then she fetched up in a detailed description of the lazy afternoon she had spent with Princess Josiane, playing with the princess’s extensive jewellery collection,

 

“- a coffret fit for a princess,” Gwynnen gushed. “Of course she is a princess, but - the stones, Delia, and the settings, and all of it so beautiful, you really _would not_ believe -”

 

“What was your favourite?” Delia asked, playing for time. “Did you get to try any of it on?”

 

“Oh yes - she was very gracious. I think I got to try everything on, including this amazing copper and obsidian necklace, quite a strange style, hundreds of years old, but Princess Josiane says it’s traditionally worn by the women of the royal family -”

 

Raka work, Delia thought automatically, settling her horse as it shied at a suspicious-looking tree root. War plunder.

 

“- oh no, not quite everything, she put on this opal parure to show me and didn’t take it off, and of course I didn’t like to ask. Such a pretty blue - moonstone pale but full of fire - simply hundreds of stones, and and all in this delicate silver setting, like lace, she looked like Queen Anj’la, you know, in the stories -”

 

Anj’la and Norrin, Delia thought, the Dominion Jewel, jewels, why jewels -

 

 _Blayce wasn’t carrying Roger’s Gift, and he should have been. Roger hasn’t got his Gift attached to him_ , she heard Thom saying, in her head. _I’ll bet anything that Roger’s lying when he says he left it in the grave, which means it’s stored somewhere. Maybe in opals or something._

 

Opals. Duke Roger was missing his Gift, which could be stored in opals. He was probably in league with Princess Josiane. And Princess Josiane was walking around covered in opals.

 

Delia’s hands tightened automatically on her reins, and her horse fussed. She soothed it, and told Gwynnen to go on, painting keen interest onto her face. Gwynnen had probably told her everything useful she had to say, but Delia wouldn’t turn down another gem like that.

 

She took her information to Myles and Thom, and was disappointed to be shot down. She was playing cards this time, and beating Myles: she said it was only fair. Thom was trying to learn thread magic from Eleni, based on a manual she had written for him and using hanks of thread stolen from Delia’s longsuffering lady’s maid, but he lacked the fine control, and kept setting the thread on fire and burning his fingers.

 

“It’s a good idea,” Thom said. “It would be a clever place to hide the Gift. Nobody would think to look at Princess Josiane’s jewellery box. Except you, Delia, of course.” He set the thread alight again. “Ow! Stupid thing. But that’s not enough fire opals to hold a Gift the size of Roger’s, even if it’s an enormous full set of jewels. She’d need to be wearing an entire robe made of them.”

 

“Part of it, perhaps?” Myles suggested. He laid the suit Delia had been waiting for down and Delia topped it with the ace, sweeping them all away from him.

 

“If I were Roger,” Thom said, “or Alex, supposing Alex has been foolish enough to get involved as an advisor, I would not put even a part of my Gift directly into the hands of someone I knew was trying to use me.”

 

“Good point,” Myles said. “But jewels, I feel, would be an excellent avenue of enquiry.”

 

“What else could she buy without causing comment?” Delia said. “Nobody needs to have it explained to them why a princess is buying jewels. Are there better ones than fire opals?”

 

“Black opals,” Thom said, without hesitation. “A couple of handfuls of black opals correctly prepared, and I could drain off my entire Gift and keep it there for months. But those are _expensive_.”

 

 “Good,” Myles said mildly, laying down three more cards. Delia glanced at them and saw exactly what she needed to do to counter them, and then glanced up at Myles’s face. His eyes were very sharp, and suddenly Delia wondered if Princess Josiane was clever enough to be afraid. “Expensive things are easier to find than cheap ones. And people tend to remember where they came from.”

 

Delia toyed with one of the discarded cards, bending the corner. “I’ve seen Princess Josiane wear black opals. Only three or four, but big ones. Gwynnen wouldn’t have seen them in the jewellery box; they’re hairpins.”

 

“I never noticed them,” Thom said. “And I would definitely notice if someone were heaving around enough Gift to level the palace in a few hairpins.”  
  
“I’ve only seen them once,” Delia said. “She was wearing them the night after Queen Lianne died, with a coronet braid in her hair.”

 

Even Thom frowned at that.

 

“Why do you think Cythera is so willing to feed me information?” Delia asked, laying down a set of cards and winning the game. “When I said she hated Princess Josiane, I meant it.”

 

***

 

In Port Udayapur Raoul insisted his way first into the hostelry where the heroes of the Dominion Jewel were staying, and then into the presence of the innkeeper, and then right up to Alanna’s bedroom door. Finally seeing her - blocky and wiry, with new planes of experience on that stubborn face and the same old fire in those violet eyes, and that blessed cat trailing her every move - was a relief Raoul didn’t know how to quantify. Here was the missing piece, the linchpin they needed to put the court back together, to set things to rights, to -

 

To kill Roger once more, if need be. Cold crept up Raoul’s spine, as it always did when he thought of the resurrected duke.

 

“Raoul! Gods all bless, Goldenlake!”

 

“In the flesh!” Raoul beamed, shoving away his worries to focus on seeing one of his closest friends again for the first time in the best part of two years. “And look, I’ve got something for you that you’ll want.”  


He pulled the letter from his pocket and set it in her hands, and watched as her eyes went round and her fingers curled protectively around it. Delia had taken no chances with her seals, and she’d sewn the letter into a packet of waxed cloth, but her conventional, slightly overly bold lady’s hand was still clear in the name inked onto the front.

 

_Sir Alanna of Trebond and Olau, called the Lioness._

 

“I can go away if you want to read it now,” Raoul said, trying to be tactful.

 

“Later,” Alanna said, tearing her eyes from the letter with apparent difficulty. “Tell me everything, Raoul. What’s happening? Why are you here?”

 

Raoul told her everything, from the beginning. He saw her face turn from shock to acceptance and stony determination, and he also saw that she never once put Delia’s letter down.


	11. Chapter 11

The first Delia knew of Alanna’s return was Anilys, putting Delia’s breakfast down on the table and saying that one of the cooks’ boys had told the kitchenmaids that Alanna the Lioness had been seen riding through Corus with Sir Raoul, the Shang Dragon, a stunningly lovely princess, a wild warrior of the K’mir, and an army.

 

Delia blinked very hard and put down her spiced chocolate. “When last I checked, Sir Alanna didn’t command an army.”

 

“Well, you never know with that one, my lady,” Anilys said, accurately. Delia really could not fault her on her opinion of the Trebond twins, unflattering as it might be. “And she’s been gone a very long time.”

  
  
“She has,” Delia said, feeling a certain trepidation take root in the pit of her stomach. She picked up her chocolate again and sipped at it. “Did the boy say where she went?”

 

“She’s not in the palace, Lady Delia, or I’d have heard. It might be as she’s gone to House Olau.”

 

“Very likely. Do you know if Lord Thom knows?”

  
  
“His lordship doesn’t take breakfast at a regular hour and doesn’t talk much to the servants, my lady.”

 

Delia deduced that he had almost certainly had no idea. “Please bring me my writing desk.”

 

Anilys brought over the portable desk, and Delia unlocked it with a fingerprint, retrieved pen, ink and paper, and scribbled a quick note to the effect that Alanna had returned and was probably at House Olau, and Delia intended to take the first sensible opportunity to visit. Delia handed the note to Anilys.

 

“You may slip it under his door if you really don’t wish to speak to him,” she said, “but I’ve spoken to Thom and he knows perfectly well that if he were even to threaten you with a frog, toad, newt or anything else of that sort he’d have _me_ to deal with. And Sir Alanna will not look very kindly on such behaviour either.”

 

Anilys did not look altogether convinced, but she bobbed a curtsey and let herself out.

 

Delia applied herself to both her breakfast and her correspondence. The former sat uneasily in her stomach and the latter merely confirmed that Alanna had returned and was at House Olau. There were also two bills (which Delia set aside to pay), one letter from Eiralys of Malven (with whom Delia had struck up a surprisingly productive correspondence; she popped the letter into her writing desk for later), an ill-judged missive from her father (which she skimmed for information and then burnt), a long screed of matrimonial advice from a cousin which had probably been misdirected, and a note from George Cooper, asking if she knew anything about sunset butterflies.

 

Delia did not know anything about sunset butterflies. She shelved the question for later.

 

Breakfast finished, she got up and fetched her cloak from the dressing room. She glimpsed herself in the mirror, and stopped suddenly, arrested by her reflection.

  
Alanna had liked her very much indeed once. Loved her, perhaps. But nearly two years had passed since Delia had promised to wait for her, and she didn’t really know who she was going to meet. A limited correspondence didn’t do enough to keep her in touch with Alanna’s thoughts and feelings. They didn’t tell her what Alanna had experienced that became those far-fetched songs. They couldn’t tell her what Alanna would see when she saw Delia next. Alanna had chosen a Court lady with a little more intelligence, taste for scandal, and interest in the unusual than most would lay claim to, and in her absence, Delia had become - what? A confidential agent? An investigator? A spy?

 

A chess-player, a friend of thieves and sorcerors, opponent to a princess, tool for a queen, someone who owned spelled arrows and a small practical knife for moments of serious concern -

 

Delia plucked nervously at her skirts and lifted her head. At least she hadn’t changed much physically. She was perhaps a little slimmer and wirier from the sheer amount of time she had spent riding and hunting and teaching archery, but Alanna wasn’t the kind to mind that. Her skin was as good as ever, her eyes as bright, despite the anxieties of the last two years, the lurking revenant about Court, and Thom’s general existence. The dark grey of her dress was not the best colour for her, particularly when she was pale with anxiety, but the embroidered grey and dark green bodice was pretty. Although she wore her hair in the old-fashioned curled style, half-loose with a small high plaited bun to pull it off her face, of Queen Lianne’s early days, it was nothing Alanna hadn’t seen her wear before. It suited her, unlike half the other women resorting to nostalgia to pretend the situation wasn’t profoundly unstable and uncanny.  

 

Delia took a deep breath. She wasn’t afraid of seeing Alanna again. That would be absurd.

 

She did wish she knew what to do, to make Alanna look at her and see the pretty woman she had liked to pass her time with. If Alanna had been a man she could simply have made herself up a little more and had Anilys lace her bodice a few inches tighter. But Alanna wasn’t that simple or that shallow.

 

Delia rode down into the City with one of her manservants for escort, and left him to stable Sweetheart and on no account to pick a fight with Myles’ Bazhir guards. (Hillmen and Bazhir mixed poorly, and Delia refused to be responsible for any unpleasant little consequences. Her men would behave or they’d return to Eldorne and her father’s bad pay and worse discipline.) The guards on the door knew her well, and greeted her and granted her entrance to the house without quibbling or requiring her to wait. Delia exchanged a few polite words with them - under Eleni’s tutelage, she had learned exactly how useful it was to know everyone’s children’s and sweethearts’ names - and then walked into the hall, removing her cloak and handing it to one of Myles’ excellent staff. On enquiry, the footman informed her that Sir Alanna and Sir Myles were discussing a matter of business upstairs in the study, but that Mistress Cooper could be found in the downstairs library and Sir Myles would surely return there soon.

 

Delia accordingly took herself off to the downstairs library, and opened the door directly into the face of the most beautiful woman she had ever seen.

 

“Great Mother Goddess,” said this apparition, reeling backwards with one hand over a characterful nose.

 

“I do beg your pardon,” Delia said, noting the woman’s youth - eighteen or nineteen, but a poised young lady, with an educated Eastern voice - and her excellent figure, dressed in a pink gown that undoubtedly belonged to Eleni. The bodice had been laced in to fit, though it was not tight. Of course, nothing of Alanna’s would fit: their proportions were quite different. “Are you hurt?”

 

“No,” said the lady, lowering her hand and staring at Delia out of a pair of luminous hazel eyes emphasised with eyelashes that half the women of Delia’s acquaintance would have sacrificed blood to possess. “Merely surprised.”

 

Eleni, hiding her amusement very badly, laid aside her book and came forward. “Princess Thayet, allow me to present Lady Delia of Eldorne to you. I think you will have heard a great deal about her.”

 

The luminous hazel eyes widened further and the rose-pink mouth opened very slightly.

 

Delia curtseyed, and was surprised to receive an equally polite curtsey in return. Possibly Princess Josiane’s finely tuned combination of bad manners and treason had ruined her for normal princesses.

 

“Delia,” Eleni continued, “this is our dear friend Thayet, who Alanna has brought home to us. She will be staying with us for some little time.”

 

“I am delighted to meet you, your highness,” Delia said, wondering exactly what Alanna had done in Sarain. Her list of questions for her former - technically current, since neither of them had broken it off - betrothed was expanding rapidly.

 

“Please do call me Thayet,” Princess Thayet said, turning those wide eyes on Eleni, who produced an expression that (on George) Delia would not have hesitated to describe as a smirk. “I have not come to Tortall to retain the titles in my fa - my _late_ father’s gift. I am likewise glad to meet you - I will go and tell Alanna you’re here.”

 

“I understand she has a business meeting with Sir Myles,” Delia said hurriedly, suddenly panicked. “There is really no call to -”

 

Princess Thayet was already out of the room. The words “I hope you know she has missed you _very much_ ,” floated in her wake.

 

Delia looked helplessly at Eleni, who gave into her amusement and chuckled in a suitably ladylike fashion.

 

Delia took a deep breath and changed the subject before Eleni could open her mouth. “We had better make sure there are several strong footmen around if His Majesty visits. King Jonathan will pass out at the sight of Princess Thayet.”

 

“Very likely,” Eleni agreed. “But if he wants to make a practical match, Thayet is not the lady for him.”  
  
“Possibly not, but if he wants to reduce his Court to swooning he could do worse, and he will need charm that powerful.” Delia heard rapid footsteps on the stairs, and felt all the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. “And there’s something to be said for strength of character that survives a war.”

 

“Alanna and the Dragon found her and her bodyguard escaping from their pursuers on foot,” Eleni said, looking even more as if she wanted to laugh than before. “Do excuse me. I have an urgent errand somewhere else in the house.”

 

“You know,” Delia said irritably, “I _used_ to wonder where George got his reprehensible sense of mischief from, but _now_ -”

 

The library door opened, and Eleni slipped out of it as Alanna all but stumbled in. Delia’s mouth went dry.

 

Alanna was thinner. That was the first thing Delia noticed. It was presumably the effect of a sea voyage - Raoul could not have got her back so fast any other way - and the months of hard travelling, and, if the rumours were indeed true, securing the Dominion Jewel. Myles had dressed her in a man’s clothes, mourning bought for the country’s current state of bereavement and sized for the woman she had been when she left Corus, and the tunic and breeches hung on her a little. Her hands were scarred, lightly bandaged in places, and the planes of her face were sharper. Her red hair had grown out to her shoulders, straight and thick and held back by a careless leather tie, and her eyes were just as absurdly violet as Delia remembered.

 

She swallowed hard, and opened her mouth to speak, but Alanna beat her to it.

  
“ _Delia_ ,” Alanna said, and caught her up in arms that were stronger than Delia recalled, and as absurdly comforting as they had always been.

 

Delia buried her face in Alanna’s hair and allowed herself to be held. She had forgotten what safety felt like.

 

“I’m still here,” she choked, after several minutes. “I’m still here.”

 

“I know,” Alanna answered. She sounded wrecked. “Delia, I missed you.”

 

Delia curled her hands into the back of Alanna’s ill-fitting tunic and held on tight.

 

“Was it an adventure after all?” she asked, muffled.

  
“It was,” Alanna said frankly, “and _Goddess_ , it was _awful_ , and I’m never doing it again.”

 

Delia laughed through tears she didn’t remember starting.

 

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” she said.

 

 

Princess Thayet could contain her curiosity very well, it turned out, but Thom could not. Delia and Alanna were permitted half an hour to themselves before he tumbled into House Olau wearing mismatched boots and seized Alanna in a brotherly hug that made her yelp and poke him hard in the ribs. Everyone in the house, including Faithful, promptly piled into the library, their curiosity justified by Thom’s tactless behaviour.

 

“Two years!” Thom said, lifting Alanna a hair’s breadth off the ground with a grunt of effort. Alanna was mostly muscle and Thom was not very fit. “Two years and you didn’t write once!”  


“I wrote twice,” Alanna said defensively. “And I wrote to Delia. And Myles.”

 

“But not to me!”

 

“You don’t write back. And your last letter self-destructed before I could finish reading it. Coram wasn’t thrilled.”

 

“That was because it was about the entire Princess Josiane situation.”

 

“Princess Josiane what?” Alanna said, looking at Delia, who flicked her eyes in the general direction of Princess Thayet and looked at the ceiling. Princess Thayet had settled herself demurely on a chair, hands folded in her lap and her bodyguard - a girl of no more than fourteen with at least three visible weapons - standing decorously behind her, but although her face was neutral Delia was absolutely certain she was listening very carefully indeed.

  
“I’m sure Raoul filled you in on Duke Roger’s return from the dead,” Myles said diplomatically. “We believe it may not have been merely the, ah, the act of a necromancer with something to prove.”

 

Alanna stared at Myles, then narrowed her eyes at Thom, then addressed Delia: “Delia, you promised you were going to make Thom behave.”

 

“I didn’t get him involved in this,” Delia protested. “I could hardly _stop_ him investigating.”

 

The Shang Dragon, a mountain of a man with an overly fussy moustache and a look like nothing in the world could or would bother him, grinned.  “You mean to say your brother takes after you, Alanna?”

 

The child bodyguard sniggered.

 

Alanna huffed at them both, which made Delia smile.

 

“We’ll tell you about it over lunch,” Delia said placatingly.

 

When lunch was served, Alanna automatically offered Delia her arm, and Delia equally automatically took it. She felt, a millisecond later, the slight tension in Alanna’s arm muscles that meant Alanna realised what she’d just done; Delia squeezed her arm gently and moved forward, chatting calmly with Princess Thayet as she did so. Princess Thayet, who had accepted George Cooper’s arm with grace, was hiding her smile very successfully. The little bodyguard, Buri, looked worryingly wistful for so young a girl - who was she missing?

 

The Shang Dragon smirked outright, which, surprisingly, caused Thom to glower at him.

 

“No offence meant,” Delia heard Liam Ironarm say smoothly to Thom. “It’s just very amusing after seeing your sister pine over Lady Delia for half a year.”

 

“You’d better not,” Thom said. “I’ve threatened half the male population of Tortall with frogs at this point, and I’m not afraid to expand my remit.”

 

The backs of Alanna’s ears went red.

  
“Ignore them,” Delia said, under her breath.

 

“I’ll ignore Liam all the way into the ground on the practice courts tomorrow,” Alanna growled.  
  
“You can beat the Shang Dragon?”

 

“With swords,” Alanna admitted gruffly, as if this weren’t anointing herself the finest warrior who was not a Shang in the Eastern Lands. “Provided he doesn’t cheat.”

 

“That’s very impressive,” Delia said, meaning it.

  
“I’ve learned a lot,” Alanna said, rather shyly, as they proceeded through the hall.

 

“I look forward to watching you beat the stuffing out of the Court’s knights in even more inventive ways than previously,” Delia assured her.

 

“Myles tells me you’ve also learned a lot,” Alanna said, carefully. “Chess and so on.”

  
Delia took the seat Alanna ushered her to, and replied equally carefully. It would be better if at least some of the casually listening ears believed that she was really talking about chess. “Yes. When he adopted you, I think I came as part of the package.”

  
  
“Nonsense,” Myles said, from the head of the table. “I know talent when I see it; it’s just that Alanna brought it to my attention.”

 

Alanna smiled at her proudly. New tan, new lines of care, new confidence in her carriage and new muscle on her shoulders - but the exact same smile she used to wear when Delia’s arrows hit targets she couldn’t have managed before.   
  
It was Delia’s turn to blush.


	12. Chapter 12

They had two months until King Jonathan’s coronation, which would once have seemed like a great deal of time to Delia, but now did not.

 

The first order of business (Delia and Myles agreed, Myles informed Duke Gareth, Duke Gareth agreed, and everyone told King Jonathan) was to clearly establish that Alanna the Lioness had returned home with the Dominion Jewel and set it into the hands of the rightful king. Hopefully that would put off any plotters. Delia had no faith that it would discourage Duke Roger, who she was convinced was as mad as a hatter, but even a revenant couldn’t act without assistance. His Gift must be somewhere, which meant someone must be helping him, and that someone might be less zealous and uncaring of the grave than Roger himself. To the same end, Liam and George and some of Myles’ informants went out into the City, and Liam started talking about Alanna’s heroics and the power of the Jewel while George and the informants started talking about the Lioness and the Dragon, saving a princess and the Dominion Jewel from a civil war. Delia primed Anilys and Tilaine with similar stories, and was pleased but not altogether surprised when Isabela of Elden and the suggestible Gwynnen started requesting ballads of Norrin and Anj’la or Miache from the singers at Court - Cythera really was too sharp. Thom stayed up two days and two nights straight to write a learned treatise on the Dominion Jewel, referring to it casually as a few initial experiments, and got it into publication with amazing speed by paying George’s friend Marek to leave a frog in the head printer’s office.

 

“Did you intend for amphibians to become a hallmark of your work?” Delia asked, when Thom told this story.

  
“No,” Thom said cheerfully. “But it seems to work, it helps people forget how dangerous I am, and besides it amuses me. Do I need new finery for this stupid presentation you have in mind?”  
  
“No,” Delia said. “But I’ve already told your servants to make sure your best sorceror’s robes are laundered.”

 

“Good luck getting Alanna to dress appropriately,” Thom grinned.

 

“Luck is for the ill-prepared,” Delia said.

 

 

A Court presentation meant new clothes, Delia and Eleni and Thayet agreed. Buri and Alanna, who would cheerfully have turned up at Court in last year’s freshly laundered Temple best, were excluded from the arrangements until the time for fittings came, at which point Delia and Liam ambushed them. Liam’s and Buri’s clothes were to be made by a tailor - Eleni had procured drawings and descriptions of traditional K’miri warrior’s regalia from a merchant friend of Myles’s, and had told Delia that a tailor would be better suited to working with the cuts of broadcloth and buckskin required. Liam was still frogmarching Buri upstairs to the room where the tailor had been set up when Delia and Alanna arrived, which suggested that he was less cunning than Delia had thought. They had arranged that he would have whisked Buri into the tailor’s clutches a good thirty minutes before Delia and Alanna stepped over the threshold.

 

“You want to be a credit to Thayet, don’t you?” Liam was saying persuasively, propelling Buri up the stairs. “You can’t do it dressed like that, my lass, and you know it.”

 

“ _Gahhh_ ,” Buri said, and let out a string of no doubt highly improper language which made Liam laugh immoderately.

 

Alanna stopped. Trying to move forward when Alanna had come to a halt was like trying to move forward with a large block of stone attached to one’s arm. “ _Delia_.”

 

“Yes?”  
  
“When you said you needed me to escort you to House Olau -”

 

“I also have an appointment with a seamstress,” Delia said. “I, too, do not wish to be at this Court presentation, where a lot of people who do not like me very much will be watching be very hard, dressed in less than my best.”

 

Alanna glared at her.

 

“Alanna,” Delia said. “You’re a legend. You’re about to present one of the world’s most powerful artefacts to your king. _Everyone will be watching you._ For your sake, for the sake of Jonathan’s reign, for my sake, you need to look as powerful and dangerous as you are.”

 

Alanna sighed. “You couldn’t have warned me?”  
  
“Be honest with yourself,” Delia said. “Had I warned you, you would have found a way not to come.”

 

Alanna snorted, which meant, in Delia’s experience, that she conceded the point. “Fine. Lead me to this stupid dressmaker.”  
  
“And don’t call her stupid,” Delia said, pressing her advantage while she was ahead, “or nothing she makes you will fit.”

 

Delia and Eleni had already decided on the colours and fits of their dresses and had ordered them earlier, which meant that this, for them, was more a fitting than anything else. Delia stood on a stool while two apprentices pinned her dark forest green hem into better shape and a different apprentice pinned pewter ribbon into place at the neckline, and watched as Princess Thayet happily lost herself in samples of colourful fabric and Alanna picked a fight with the seamstress.

 

Delia had seen this coming - Alanna liked dresses, but there was no way she would be persuaded to wear anything other than masculine clothing for her first appearance at Court as Sir Alanna. Delia hadn’t, however, been able to think of a solution in the time available to her, so she had simply asked George’s clever cousin Rispah (who knew a large number of useful things about ladies of the demi-monde associated with the Court, and with whom Delia had a productive friendship) to referee.

 

Rispah had agreed, but now she wasn’t doing it. Delia widened her eyes at the other woman, who was sitting back in her chair sketching idly on a piece of paper and watching Alanna snap at the seamstress.

 

Rispah winked.

 

Delia narrowed her eyes and lowered her brows.

 

Rispah winked again, and called over Thayet to look at a sketch. The princess nodded decisively, which reassured Delia. Thayet and Rispah both had good taste in clothing, and Rispah had once had an apprenticeship in dressmaking to back up her natural taste, but Rispah also had her cousin’s horrible sense of humour and even better timing.

  
Duly chastised for her impatience, Delia waited until Rispah let out a gentle cough and slid forward, her drawing completed.  “Perhaps something more like this.” She put the drawing into the seamstress’s hands, and stepped back, ‘coincidentally’ taking Alanna back with her.

 

“I think it would look lovely,” Princess Thayet said. “Not just in the common way. You can’t, after all, dress a lady knight the same as you would dress any other lady - especially not since she’s being recognised for her feats as a knight.”

 

“Wider breeches,” Rispah said. “Loose, soft cut. A longer tunic than a usual doublet, too.”

 

“Hmm,” said the seamstress.

 

Alanna squinted suspiciously at Delia, who shrugged as if to say she hadn’t planned this.

 

“In the dark grey silk?” Princess Thayet suggested, holding the relevant swatch up to the design.

 

“Gold trim,” said the seamstress absently.

 

Eleni winked at Delia from where she stood, perched on her own stool. _Sold_ , the older woman mouthed.

 

“I still don’t know as it’s proper,” said the seamstress reluctantly. “Ladies should dress as ladies.”

 

“Of course,” Rispah said smoothly, “if it’s too much trouble, with Princess Thayet’s gown and the finishing work to do on these ladies’ dresses, we could go to Mistress Tailor -”

 

Thayet, her pretty face a picture of sympathy, nodded understandingly and reached for the paper.

 

“Kuri Tailor?” the seamstress snapped, yanking it back. “For fine work like this? Never. Substandard fabric and her stitching comes undone at the first curtsey! I know my work.” She seized a measuring tape as if prepared to do battle, and Alanna looked honestly quite concerned. “If you please, Sir Alanna, stand over here and lift your arms. I’ll be needing your measurements.”

 

Nothing, though, not even the grim look on Alanna’s face as the seamstress called her measurements and refined her drawings, was as funny as the moment Alanna gave in to a purely selfish impulse and had her ears pierced - and promptly _passed out_.

 

Delia and Eleni grabbed her as she went down, and - once Eleni had assured them all it was only a brief faint - Delia felt an involuntary giggle catch at her throat.

 

“An’ here I thought all knights were rough, tough creatures,” Rispah remarked, completely unconcerned by any care for Alanna’s tender feelings.

 

Princess Thayet let out a small, high-pitched noise and turned away, one hand over her mouth and elegant shoulders shaking.

 

Rispah’s brown eyes were dancing.

 

“Oh, stop it,” Delia said, voice uneven with poorly suppressed laughter. “She couldn’t help i-”

 

Alanna, beginning to come round, struggled up onto one elbow and touched one ear very gingerly, disbelief and confusion written across her face. “I - what happened?” she asked, dazedly, and Rispah started to laugh. “ _Rispah_.”

 

“The nuns at the convent told me you have to suffer to be beautiful, when I had mine done,” Delia said, biting her lower lip and trying not to think too loudly how adorable Alanna looked, cross with confusion and slightly rumpled.

 

Alanna looked from person to person, still clearly puzzled, and increasingly annoyed. “Can someone explain -”

 

“You fainted,” Princess Thayet said gleefully, breaking at last into laughter.

 

Alanna reddened with embarrassment as Eleni and Delia too began to chuckle, and Delia wiped her eyes and squeezed Alanna’s hand.

 

“I’ll get you some earbobs to wear with them,” she promised. “It’s worth it when you can see how pretty they look.”

 

Alanna’s face relaxed a little, and Delia felt affection rush through her veins, suddenly. If they’d been alone, she would have kissed Alanna; but perhaps it was as well that they were not. She did not know if she still could.

 

That was the terrible thing about Alanna’s return: after the first blissful jolt of seeing her again, being held by her again, Delia found she no longer knew what they were to each other, and didn’t have the leisure or the courage for a clarifying conversation where she might have found out. They were no longer a squire and a lady, playing at a betrothal, knowing the secret must one day come out but - Delia now realised - ignoring that reality in a way that had done neither of them any credit at all. They had not had more than a day or so to accustom themselves to the new reality where Alanna’s true name was known, and then they had been parted for two years, Delia trying to re-establish herself securely, Alanna fighting to prove herself and her shield.

  
And now Alanna was back, and defending her king against all comers; and Delia was where she always had been, but filling the role of a spy desperately trying to foil a plot that involved too many treasonous princesses and too much necromancy for anyone to have any idea of how to resolve this quietly. There was no time for them to talk. There was no time for _anything_.

 

Delia attended the presentation on Thom’s arm, watched as Princess Thayet and Buri created a complete sensation (“Princess Josiane looks like she wants to spit fire,” Thom murmured maliciously), and then tried not to beam too proudly as Alanna escorted herself down the stairs, carrying the Dominion Jewel, and brought it to Jonathan’s throne and knelt with it at his feet.

 

Even Delia, who had not even one tiny scintilla of either the Gift or the Sight, felt the Jewel’s power as Alanna flipped the lacquered box open. Thom’s sharp intake of breath, and the greed in Duke Roger’s eyes, told her that she was not mistaken. The Jewel’s light shone from within itself, somehow, capturing and holding the glimmer of the ballroom’s candles and the focus of two hundred pairs of eyes. It bathed Alanna in its violet glow, it caught strangely off the beautiful planes of Thayet’s face, and when Jonathan stepped forward and lifted it in his hands for all the world to see it shone bright rays across the room, creating a spell of silence that lasted for thirty breathless seconds.

  
“And that’s _without_ the Gift or the power of the land,” Thom said with deep satisfaction, rather too loud. “We can do better than _that_ at the coronation.”

 

“Thom,” Delia said, in a ladylike undertone, not because his comments were unhelpful or because she specially wanted to chastise him but because everyone would expect her to, “we have _spoken_ about protocol.”

 

Thom shut up, grumbling.

 

Delia forced herself to circulate a little, rather than staying too close to Alanna; it was difficult, and she felt hyperaware of Alanna’s location all the time, but she could feel Alex’s eyes on her back and it was important to behave normally. She talked to all her usual friends and made new acquaintances, letting small talk flow and listening out for any detail that might be useful. She still had to work out where Princess Josiane was keeping Roger’s power - and where she was getting the money for all this. Her own revenues were impressive, but they were also roughly as above-board as you’d expect. There were no income streams diverting off into unexpected directions.

 

As the musicians struck up the opening notes of the first dance, Delia took a small glass of wine and allowed herself to drift off into contemplation of the starry night sky out of the ballroom’s enormous windows. It was already stifling hot, and the window propped open provided her with a cool breeze.

 

There were Bazhir guards stationed at decorative intervals around the ballroom, in full regalia that must be uncomfortably sweaty in the humid heat of the ballroom. Delia wondered what they thought of being here, in Corus, protecting a king half of them would probably quite cheerfully have pushed off a cliff two years ago. She wondered what benefits they hoped to extract.

 

More specifically, she wondered why George Cooper thought he was fooling anyone, wrapped up in a burnoose and carrying a curved sword. She had recognised him the moment she’d caught his eye.

 

“You must,” Delia said, examining her glass of wine and sipping at it slowly, “be sweating like a pig.”

 

“I’ve been more comfortable,” George admitted. Delia did not turn around to see his expression.

 

“The Provost isn’t here.”

“I know. I checked.”

“Why are _you_ here?”

 

 “Wanted to see what happened when our Jon got the Jewel. And what happened when the Court saw Alanna again, and Princess Thayet… all sorts o’ useful things.”

 

Delia turned her back to the window and leant against the sill. She considered asking George if he was still in love with Alanna, and if so why he thought coming here would help. The only people who knew who he was would not hand him in to the Provost’s justice, true. It wasn’t as risky as it could have been. Equally true, and a great deal more ridiculous, was the simple fact that most of the nobles now in Corus wouldn’t be able to tell a Bazhir from a tanned City dweller in a burnoose unless they looked hard, and the vast majority of them weren’t in the habit of looking hard at the servants.

  
“You asked me what I know about sunset butterflies,” Delia said, turning back once more to the window and opening it a little further. “It slipped my mind, but since you asked, I know absolutely nothing about sunset butterflies.”

 

“I asked the lad about them,” George said, presumably referring to Thom. “He says they’re used for amplifying spells. As good as swimming in the sea, without all the fish and the tides to worry about. They’re only found on Jerykun Island, in the Isles, and they’re difficult to harvest, so they don’t come cheap.”

 

Delia forced herself not to stiffen. “Jerykun - Eiralys said that’s where her brother was sent.”

 

“What do you want to bet the princess has her sticky little fingers all over that island?”

 

“Nothing,” Delia said. “Very well. I’ll find out.” She leaned out of the window a little, tilting her head into the breeze, and then heard a determined footstep behind her which caused her to stiffen and then slowly withdraw naturally into the ballroom, as if she wanted another sip of wine.

 

“Fresh air?” Alanna said.

 

“It always gets so stuffy in here.” Delia finished her wine.

 

“It’s all the hot air from the idiots who’ve never done a day’s useful work in their lives.”

 

“I used to be one of those idiots,” Delia protested.

 

“You improved,” Alanna said, with a kind of awkward generousness that made Delia want to laugh because it was so sweetly absurd.

  
“Thank you,” she said instead, very gravely.

  
Alanna grinned, and then an unnaturally solemn, nervous look came over her face and she straightened her shoulders. Delia went a little breathless, anticipating whatever disaster was about to occur next.

 

“May I have this dance?” Alanna said.

 

“I,” Delia said, stammering like she hadn’t since she was a girl at the convent, “I - yes, of course.”

 

Alanna offered her her arm, and Delia took it.

 

“There will be terrible rumours, you know,” she said, wanting to be sure that Alanna understood exactly how bad this might get. “And some people might - not be very kind.”

 

“Swords, dawn, practice court three,” Alanna said coolly, suddenly looking like the woman who had brought peace to the Bazhir by accident, ridden into a civil war out of sheer curiosity, and secured the Dominion Jewel through pure cussedness. “I haven’t forgotten how to respond to a challenge to your honour.”

 

Delia laughed helplessly, and let Alanna lead her towards the dance floor.

 

“Incidentally,” Alanna said, “am I blind, or - that was George, wasn’t it?”

 

“Yes,” Delia said, and when Alanna rolled her eyes so hard it looked as if she would sprain something, added “I _know_.”

 

The Stone Mountains glared at them when they took their places in the set, but Cythera smiled and said she’d been waiting to see Delia join the dancing for too long, and Gary nudged Alanna and teased her that she was smart to ask Delia to dance before the king complained that she was being antisocial. The world didn’t stop, Alanna remembered the steps once Delia prompted her, and Thayet smiled brightly at Delia when they met halfway down the dance. It felt almost like it used to before Alanna’s secret was out, before the king and queen died, before Duke Roger came back from the grave - it felt uncomplicated, and for the few minutes it lasted, Delia allowed herself to relax.

 

Best of all, Douglass of Veldine deliberately fouled up the measure halfway through and stood on Burchard of Stone Mountain’s foot so hard he and his wife had to leave the dance. Delia channelled her spite into her bright smile.

 

It was a good evening, despite the lurking duke, despite the unrest in the City and the tension in the room and the pairs of eyes fixed on Delia that she couldn’t get used to again. Princess Thayet was as popular as Delia had expected, and King Jonathan wasn’t the only man who couldn’t take his eyes off her; Buri, who couldn’t dance Tortallan dances and didn’t want to, spent the evening watching Thayet’s back and beating various squires at dice and cards. Probably Liam had been teaching her reprehensible tricks. Delia couldn’t help but approve, and made a note to test Buri’s skills at the next opportunity. Liam himself was a great hit with the ladies. Perhaps less so with the gentlemen.

 

Alanna and Thom escorted Delia back to her rooms; Delia went to bed feeling happy and girlish, and smiling so stupidly her own reflection embarrassed her.

 

She went to sleep easily, and jolted suddenly awake in the grey hours before dawn, as several pieces of information came together in her sleeping brain.

 

Mages used sunset butterflies to amplify their power. Mages used black opals to store it.

 

If Princess Josiane had access to a supply of sunset butterflies, she didn’t _need_ to divert any money from her income to buy opals. All she needed to do was barter the butterflies for the jewels. And if the exchange rate between butterflies and jewels was fairly good, she could have stored all of Roger’s power, and any other power he could get his hands on. Thom had said that necromancers could steal spirits, and it had taken them months to catch up with Blayce - from what Thom had found out from other mages, from the crumbs Roger had let slip about his resurrection, he had re-entered the world of the living three months before his dramatic February appearance at Court. If Princess Josiane could provide an unlimited supply of black opals, and Blayce could steal the Gifts and spirits of other mages unencumbered for three months...

 

“Mithros preserve us,” Delia said to the ceiling, and lay awake staring at it until dawn’s grey light crept through the shutters.


	13. Chapter 13

In the afternoon of the following day, when hangovers had worn off and sleep debts been replenished, King Jonathan had a pleasant collegial meeting with his friends, during which he declared Alanna King’s Champion. Delia wasn’t present, but she didn’t need to be. Raoul had let slip the meeting was happening, Alanna hadn’t yet been told that King Jonathan wanted to appoint her, and Delia had already deduced that this was the most appropriate place for Alanna to carry on hitting people who threatened her liege lord with whatever weapon came to hand.

 

Also, Duke Gareth had taken Myles’ place for a game of chess last week and had asked Delia if her father had found retiring from the Court pleasant, or merely boring. Delia had informed Duke Gareth that in her experience it depended on the temperament of the person doing the retiring. Both of them had understood each other perfectly.

 

Instead of being at King Jonathan’s pleasant collegial meeting - where she had, in any case, absolutely no business to be present - Delia was at a distinctly grim meeting with Myles, George, Eleni, and Thom. Princess Thayet had dragged Buri riding in the Royal Forest with her, Isabela of Elden, and some other young women of excellent birth and better connections, which was fortunate. It meant they would be out of the way for several hours at least. Delia liked both girls too much to get them involved in this.

  
Delia paced around Myles’s study, and told them what she had realised in the middle of the night. Instead of leading the discussion, Myles sat back, frowning, and let Delia allow her thoughts to unspool.

 

“- so my questions are,” Delia said, coming to a halt at the window and turning on her heels to face the room, “firstly, are there mages missing from the City, especially the Lower City? Secondly, does Princess Josiane have a personal stake in the sunset butterfly trade? Thirdly, did she employ Ralon of Malven there, and is there any proof of that? Fourthly, which of the apothecaries is suddenly dealing in sunset butterflies more than opals? And fifthly…”

 

“Fifthly,” Myles prompted, after a moment.

 

Delia’s mouth had dried up. She swallowed. “Where did she put the opals? And can we destroy them?”

 

“That’s six,” Thom said, pedantically.

 

Eleni, listing the questions neatly, filed them as _5a_ and _5b_.

 

“I can find out about the mages,” she said. “I know every healer below the Upper City Gates. I trained half of them.”

 

“None of the apothecaries usually deal in both black opals _and_ sunset butterflies,” Thom said. “They’re rare goods. And it has to be a Tortall-based merchant or she can’t bring that many raw opals into the country without questions, so...  yes. It has to be somebody I would know of.” He shrugged. “That won’t be difficult to find out.”

 

“I could tell you about Claw if I could get my damned hands on him,” George said, regretful and annoyed. “I don’t know where he goes.”

 

“To Alex of Tirragen?” Delia suggested. “Alex knew him too. He didn’t like him, but if Ralon is Princess Josiane’s tool, and Alex is helping Duke Roger use Josiane…”

 

“... he could be hiding in the palace,” George completed, and scowled. “Crooked God’s -”

 

“George,” Eleni said mildly, dipping her pen into the inkpot.

 

“- rings,” George said, without missing a beat.

 

Myles smiled. Delia ignored this. “Alex’s rooms are in an older part of the palace,” Delia said. “Riddled with passages and staircases no-one uses, and connected to the catacombs and the old ways out into the City. It’s a rabbit warren. Ralon could easily slip in and out.”

 

There was a discomfited silence.

 

“Well, I can answer some of these questions,” Myles said, pulling out a sheaf of letters. “Olin of Malven was willing to talk once the situation was explained to him - attainders are highly unfortunate - and he was initially keeping tabs on his son’s movements. Ralon of Malven found work on Jerykun Island at the Arisang Plantation, where he rose to the rank of supervisor and was commended for his productivity, which I take to mean the productivity of the slaves he was responsible for brutalising. Arisang Plantation is where the greatest known density of sunset butterflies in the world is found. It’s technically the property of Princess Imajane, but as Princess Josiane is the oldest unmarried daughter, she is by law steward of her little sisters’ wealth. In the event of their deaths it falls to her.”

 

“Hope they’ve got good nursemaids in Rajmuat,” George muttered.

 

“Quite.” Myles sat back. “However, we’ll be lucky if we survive long enough to so much as send Princess Josiane home in disgrace. There isn’t much time. We need to find Claw and neutralise him - preferably jail him, George, but I could overlook an ear or two; I want to prove the Tirragen connection - and we need to find the opals. The opals are most important.”

 

For a long while, no-one said anything. Eleni stared at her list, and then set it on fire and brushed the ashes neatly into a small bin.

 

“I suppose we’d better get started, then,” Delia said, and rose to her feet.

 

***

 

It took only days for Thom to find the apothecary, a Copper Islander with Tortallan family and a business split between the two countries. The part-raka girl Sary, who had not known anything about Blayce but did recognise the merchants she was expected to welcome and serve drinks, confirmed that the apothecary had done business with Blayce. George used the apothecary to set a trap for Claw, and caught him; but he near enough killed him doing so, and Claw would not be worth questioning for weeks.

 

“I’m sorry,” George said to Myles.

 

“I know you must have had a reason,” Myles said, even enough to make it clear that he fully expected there had been a reason and wanted to be informed of it now.

 

“He grabbed a boy for a shield,” George said. “One of the apothecary’s kids. There wasn’t another way to take him down.”

 

“That explains why the apothecary is singing like a bird,” Myles said equably, and clapped George on the shoulder. “Unfortunately he doesn’t know where the opals went. It’s far from ideal, but it could be worse.”

 

***

 

Eleni found a minimum of twenty-five missing mages, mostly inexperienced, new in town, or possessed of irregular habits that meant they hadn’t been immediately missed, and their disappearances hadn’t been properly investigated. Myles’ agents found proof of Ralon of Malven’s employment at Arisang Plantation, and his rise into the favour of its absentee landlady, Princess Josiane.

 

***

 

Delia did not find a hiding place for opals. They searched and searched, but none of them found anything, and the days ticked down and they all began to look increasingly strained and _they were running out of time_.

 

***

 

“The only person who looks cheerful around here is Roger,” Thom said, the night before the coronation. The Court was trying to rejoice, using planned festivities. It wasn’t working. The atmosphere of nervous tension was infectious.

 

“Shush,” Delia said half-heartedly, and had Alanna escort her back to her rooms early.

 

She paused at her door. “Alanna… I’m sorry I couldn’t stop this. We were supposed to stop it before you came back.”

 

“What, Roger?” Alanna said, visibly taken aback.

 

Delia nodded.

 

“He’s a treasonous toad with far too much power for his own good,” Alanna said, and squeezed Delia’s hands tightly. “He’s slippery. It took me eight years just to catch him out the first time. And if you need me to kill him again I’ll oblige.”

 

Delia let out a sad little laugh, and gripped Alanna’s hands in return. She would have liked to kiss her, or at least to hug her, but that strange constraint of not knowing what they were still held her.

 

“Sleep well,” Alanna said, smiling at her.

 

Delia didn’t.


	14. Chapter 14

To Alanna, the coronation felt much like the day of her knighting - sleepwalking through a blur, _knowing_. It was as if she were in a play, and had somehow already learned all her lines. She knew where she must be and when and how, and she couldn’t make any of it stop.

 

She spoke the piece Master Oakbridge had written for her, and handed the Dominion Jewel to Jon. He lifted in his hands and the Hall of Crowns, formerly cheering for their king, fell silent as the swirling magic of the land combined with Jon’s Gift and with the relentless glow of the Jewel, and -

 

The earth howled, and the palace _shivered_.

 

Alanna half-drew her sword, looking around wildly. Raoul rose to his feet. Men in Tirragen colours threw off their cloaks and drew weapons on the half-defenceless crowd, Buri hustled Delia and Thayet into a defensible corner, and Thom ran to Alanna’s side.

 

“He’s raising the land,” he gasped, grabbing Alanna’s shoulder. “He’s raising the land! Kill him before he can finish or we’ll all end up in the sea!”  


“Jon -” Alanna said, reeling, defaulting to her permanent duty to protect her king. She glanced wildly around for Jon and Delia, and found Gary and Raoul standing over Jon, and Delia graciously accepting a stolen crossbow from Buri. Safe – for the moment.

  
“We will defend King Jonathan,” Master Si-cham said, joining Alanna on her other side. “Duke Roger, however, is your fate.”

  
There was a yowling at her feet, and Alanna looked down to see Faithful.

 

“I left you in my rooms,” she said, accusing.

  
  
_Unfinished business_ , yowled Faithful. _Come on!_

 

“Never mind your bloody cat, lend me your Gift,” Thom said urgently, fingers digging in to Alanna’s shoulder. “Delia made me swear to do it only in an emergency, but this _is_ an emergency.”

 

“What?” Alanna said, puzzled, and protested: “I’ll need it for Roger -”

  
“You’ve got a sword! You can - fight things! And there’ll be no use killing Roger if there’s no land left to live on afterwards!”

 

Alanna hesitated for five frantic seconds, and then Faithful howled furiously _he’s right, just get on with it_ , and she nodded, feeling fear shiver around the space in her chest where her Gift lived. “What do I have to do?”

 

“Nothing,” Thom said indignantly. “I’m better at this than that. And besides, you’re my twin.”

 

“Goddess,” Alanna hissed, feeling the imperceptible, alien drain of her Gift slipping from her into Thom - all but a tiny percentage, which was what kept her from falling to her knees, and meant she only staggered instead. “Never do that again!”

 

“Fine! No problem!” Thom shoved her in the direction of Faithful, who was fairly dancing on his paws. “Just go and kill Roger before he kills us all!”

 

Alanna shook her head to bring some clarity to her temporarily fogged vision, and pulled her sword fully from its sheath. “Take care of Delia!”

 

“Are you joking? She just shot a man. No, yes, I know – just _go_!”

 

Alanna followed Faithful out of the Hall of Crowns at a run. She saw everything and registered nothing, except for one brief glimpse of Princess Josiane sitting still in her seat, surrounded by her impassive guards.

 

Josiane was watching the battle as if it were a show, and she was smiling.

 

 

 _Unfinished business_ , Alanna thought, as Alex stepped out to bar her way to the catacombs. Faithful hissed and spat at the other knight, as if that wasn’t what he’d meant, and made to run past; but Alex blocked both of them with a showy, casually competent sweep of his blade.

  
“You want to play best squire at a time like this?” Alanna said aloud.

  
“No time like the present,” Alex said, deadpan.

 

 _This is **stupid** ,_ meowed Faithful, furiously, skittering recklessly around Alex’s feet as Alanna raised her sword to counter Alex’s blow. _Alanna, get rid of him! Every second we’re still here is another second Roger gets to tear the Eastern Lands apart!_

 

A few minutes later, Alex got rid of Faithful. He didn’t even do it on purpose; Faithful was just a little too slow to dodge out of the way of an attack focussed on Alanna. And he didn’t show the slightest emotion as Faithful’s bleeding body fell.

  
Alanna howled with rage, and finished him.

 

She knelt to stroke Faithful’s fur and mourn him for a few moments. And then she got to her feet, and carried on down the stairs.

 

It wasn’t that much further.

 

In the catacombs Duke Roger stood, leaning against his open tomb, and admiring his Gate of Idramm. The great heavy slab of a door was open, and inside, something glittered with an unearthly light.  
  
Alanna adjusted her sweaty grip on her sword. “Roger!”

 

Duke Roger looked up and laughed. He was as beautifully dressed as ever, but he was wearing the black robes of a Carthaki master of sorcery, and a heavy jewelled medallion around his neck - not coronation wear. And there was something in his eyes Alanna misliked.

 

“Come to finish your work?” he called. “Or come to join my collection?”  


Whatever was inside the tomb glinted and shone suddenly, fiercely, a hundred colours in a mosaic dominated but not completed by Roger’s bright orange, and then it swarmed out of the tomb, roaring like the wind in Alanna’s ears, and enclosed Roger.

 

Alanna yelled - in shock, in panic, she didn’t know. She had no Gift to defend herself from whatever she was seeing Roger become: she had nothing but her sword and her self.

 

“Nobody bothered me, when I came down here to mourn my uncle,” Roger said, slowly becoming visible as more than an outline among the colours. “They all gave me an extremely wide berth. It was not difficult to smuggle the stones in - or the remainder of the stones, I should say. Most were already here by the time your precocious brother and your pretty little leman tumbled to the idea that I could be storing my power that way. Naturally no-one will touch my tomb, for fear of demons.”

 

Alanna snarled. The catacombs rumbled ominously around them, and dust drifted down from the vaulted ceiling. “What have you _done_? You can’t carry a Gift that’s not your own, and that’s - that’s -”

 

“Thirty-three Gifts, not including my own,” Roger agreed pleasantly. He looked almost like himself now, except for the colours that flickered at the edges of his silhouette like hungry flames. “Blayce was limited, as mages go, but he did one thing very well and he was highly efficient. The same can’t be said of most.”

 

“That’s not your Gift, you’ll - you’ll burn from the inside out -”

 

“I will,” Roger said. “You’re very quick today, Lioness. Feeling sharp, after killing my squire?”

 

“It was a fair fight!”

 

“No doubt,” Roger said silkily. “But you will wish Alex had won by the time I’m finished.”

 

The ground shuddered, and Alanna staggered with it.

 

“I’m going to make you watch, Lioness,” Roger shouted over the renewed noise. “This land is going to tear itself apart, for all my wretched cousin and your beloved brother try to hold it together. It’s going to rip itself to shreds, and I’m going to make you watch every last second.”

 

“You will _die_.”

 

“I’ve been dead, or mostly,” Roger said. There was a shine in his eyes that scared Alanna more than the rumbling earth or the steadily rising glow from the Gate of Idramm. “I’m not afraid of that.”

 

He stepped casually into the centre of the Gate of Idramm, and held out a commanding hand to her. “You’ve ruined my sword, Trebond, but it still knows it’s mine. Come.”

 

Alanna felt herself pulled inexorably towards Roger’s gesturing hand. She fought to keep her feet, to fight back, to do anything but follow Roger into the Gate, and all around her the palace’s foundations screamed.

 

Roger laughed as the pressure on Alanna increased, as her feet slid inexorably forward. Alanna thought of what Liam had told her about Shang fighting, how to twist a blow into an opportunity, what George had shown her of hand-to-hand, how to turn a fighter’s strength against him, what Delia had let her see, of letting an opponent make their own mistakes.

 

Alanna let go.

 

The sword flew fast and true into Roger’s chest with all the unnatural force he himself had exerted on it, sending him flying backwards until it pinned him against the tomb door. The mosaic of light that had made him up brightened unbearably, obscuring the black of his robes and the stain of his blood until Alanna had to cover her eyes. There was a sound like distant screaming, and Alanna felt pressure in her ears so strong she dropped to her knees, cradling her head. Then something rushed out like a candle and its smoke catching in the wind, and Alanna was left with ringing ears, the sound of the palace settling back onto its foundations, and profound nausea.

 

She staggered to her feet, and limped over to Roger’s tomb. The sword transfixed only the stone, and the shadow of a man in robes spread-eagled: bar a little ash there was no other trace of Roger. The black opals that had contained thirty-three Gifts, plus Roger’s own, were cracked clean across; a princess’s price for treason, ruined. Distantly, Alanna wondered if Josiane was alive or dead.

 

Each of the opals shining on the floor of Roger’s tomb had been a person once. Alanna felt her stomach roll, and turned around just in time to throw up on the Gate of Idramm, rather than in the tomb. She would have preferred to scuff it to neutralise it, but vomit would probably smudge its purpose just as well.

 

Alanna stumbled back to the door she had come through, back up the stairs - seriously damaged and probably unsafe, but she hadn’t the time to worry about it - and back the way she had came. Past Alex’s body; past Faithful’s. Faithful she picked up and carried in her arms, all the way back to the Hall of Crowns, where she laid him among the honourable dead. Alex she didn’t spare a glance for: she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

 

Thom and Jon and Si-cham were sitting on the throne’s dais. Jon had the Dominion Jewel on his lap, and was rubbing one hand slowly over his temple. Thom looked up, and beckoned to her to come.

 

Alanna walked up the aisle, passing men and women she had known since her childhood without seeing them, as if she were a ghost. Thom took her hand as soon as she was close enough, and a little purple fire shone around their fingers for a few moments. Less than Alanna might have hoped, but enough to bring warmth to her veins.

 

“You used nearly all of it up,” Alanna said.

  
“Well, excuse me if I was busy,” Thom said, but he lurched up to wrap her in a tight hug and kiss her forehead.

 

Jon smiled wearily up at them both. “I take it my cousin’s dead.”

 

“I’d show you the body, but he exploded,” Alanna said. “At least, I think he exploded.”

 

“Fascinating,” Master Si-cham said, sounding as if he actually meant it.

 

 _Mages_. “I’ll leave it to you and Thom to work out exactly what happened.” Alanna looked around, and saw only about half the people she had hoped to identify, and too many bodies covered by any linen that could be found. Sick dread overtook her. “Where -”

 

“Delia went to deal with Princess Josiane, and Myles is in the infirmary, with Duke Baird and Mistress Eleni,” Jon said. “It’s only a scratch. Duke Gareth is there as well. He had a small heart attack. Liam is - Liam is gone.” Jon bowed his head, and Alanna looked past him to the shrouded figure on the altar. Her heart sunk to the floor, leaden, and she swayed slightly. There was some kind of hot, painful lump in her throat, which might have been made of tears. “He took eight arrows for me, Alanna. And he didn’t slow until the very last one. They’ll sing the Dragon’s last fight for years.”  


“Decades,” said a very familiar voice behind Alanna. “I’ll make sure of it, your majesty.”

  
  
“Please see that you do, Lady Delia,” Jon said.

 

Alanna turned so fast she almost fell over. Delia caught her with one steadying hand on her shoulder, and smiled. She looked tired - the kind of tired you get from having been very much afraid. There was blood on the hem of her dress, but only the hem.

 

She slid her hand down Alanna’s arm, and took Alanna’s hand. Then she turned her attention to Jon. “Your majesty, I regret to inform you that Princess Josiane has somehow burned to death.”

 

There was a short silence.

  
“What?” Jon said, plainly baffled.

 

“Her guards, who are now in secure custody, are rather charred. There is nothing where she was sitting except for some ash, some scraps of metal, and this.” Delia held out an ash-struck black opal, cracked clean in half. “It appears to be a broken black opal.”

 

“That’s what the ones in the catacombs look like,” Alanna said, consciously not swaying. “The ones Roger was using to store his Gift in. They all cracked and burned when I killed him.”

 

“She must have thought it was some kind of a security policy,” Delia said thoughtfully. “Keeping one with her.” She glanced down at it. “I don’t suppose any of you gentlemen has a clean handkerchief? Mine is currently attached to Buriram, and I’d rather not put this in my pockets.”

 

“I’d rather you didn’t either,” Alanna said. “Thom, put it somewhere… safe, won’t you?”

 

Thom nodded. Si-cham cut a piece from the inside of his robes - “I can find a handkerchief, Master, please don’t - well, if you insist,” - and wrapped the pieces of opal up in it, then handed it over to Thom for safekeeping.

 

Almost absently, Delia wiped her dirty hand on her skirts and looked at Alanna.

 

“Well,” Alanna said. “That’s over, then.”

 

Delia looked at Jon and smiled. “Long live King Jonathan.”

 

Jon smiled back.

  
“If only so we don’t have to do all of this again,” Thom muttered to his knees.

 

“ _Thom_!” cried at least five outraged people, and then Alanna caught Jonathan’s eye and saw him grinning, and then laughter bubbled up and took over both of them, and Alanna laughed until she wept.

 

 _Duke Roger is dead_ , cried the people in the streets. _Long live the King._


	15. epilogue

Delia arrived at the Bloody Hawk with Myles, Thayet and Buri in tow, some weeks after the Shang Wildcat dropped by to hand off Liam’s last letter of advice. Thayet immediately made the acquaintance of Kourrem and Kara. Buri, taking care of the horses, slotted straight into the group of young people learning to be warriors.

 

Delia struggled up a dune in her skirts and found her way to Alanna, who was meditating on top of it, her face peaceful and her short red hair blowing in the faint breeze.

 

Alanna realised none of this until she rose slowly from her meditation and registered Delia’s presence, sitting on the sand next to her with her knees drawn up to her chest, watching the sun set over the hills in the distance. She had been wearing a light veil to keep the sun off her face, but at some point she had unpinned it and pulled it off, and it now trailed loosely from one hand.

 

She looked sideways at Alanna and smiled. Alanna smiled back.

 

Behind them the familiar sounds of the tribe and the shamans’ school preparing for dinner echoed through the air, but between them there was nothing but a comfortable silence.

 

Alanna stretched out her legs, which had been crossed for far too long, and said to the sunset: “I didn’t know you were coming.”

 

“It was in the nature of an impromptu visit,” Delia said. “Myles has a standing invitation, and Thayet was sufficiently embarrassed by having to turn down King Jonathan’s proposal that she decided a pleasant desert holiday was in order.”

 

Alanna blinked at Delia, astonished. “Thayet turned him down?”

 

“I know,” Delia agreed. “Eleni made a scandalous amount of money on the betting. I think she taught George to play the odds, you know.”  


“That’s what Rispah always used to say,” Alanna said, and then burst out: “But I thought she _wanted_ to marry Jon?”

 

“After due consideration,” Delia said, so lightly and carelessly that Alanna knew she was telling only part of the truth, “Thayet decided that three months’ acquaintance was not enough to cause her to give up all her previous plans and marry a king whose character she wasn’t quite sure of.”

 

“Not sure of - but it’s _Jon_.”  


“Yes, exactly,” Delia said wryly. “It’s Jon.”

 

Alanna thought about this for a second, and then rubbed her temples. “Goddess. I’m stupid.”  


Delia touched her shoulder gently. “No, you’re not. You just don’t see why anyone might be less than sure about wanting to marry your best friend.”

 

“But you do,” Alanna said, with a sudden flash of insight. “You talked to Thayet? Convinced her not to marry him?”  


“I did not convince her of anything,” Delia said. “I just listened when she talked about Jon and her plans for the future. At various points I said ‘Yes’, ‘No’, and perhaps even ‘Indeed’.” Delia shrugged elegantly. “Thayet made the decision herself. It would have been a lot to take on for a girl with no family and no connections in Tortall. And besides, she really does have plans of her own.”

 

Alanna sighed. “I really thought it would have been a good match.”

 

“I’m sure their children would have been beautiful,” Delia said dryly.  

 

 Alanna snorted, and nudged her with one elbow. “Fine.”

 

They fell silent. After a few moments, Alanna took Delia’s hand, and Delia leaned her head on Alanna’s shoulder. Alanna turned her head slightly so that her cheek rested against Delia’s hair, and then – carefully, shyly – she pressed a kiss to Delia’s temple. Delia shivered slightly, and Alanna withdrew, worried, but then Delia turned her head quickly and caught Alanna’s lips with her own, in the first kiss they’d shared for two years.

 

It didn’t last long enough; it lasted forever; and when it was over, they were both smiling.

  
“I’m glad you’re here,” Alanna said. “How long are you staying?”

 

Delia raised her eyebrows. “That depends,” she replied. “How long would you like me to?”


End file.
